Signs indicate that we are moving from the reactionary stage of coronavirus, to the adjustment period. As lockdown orders begin to ease, weak signals are emerging that indicate how we are going to live with a global virus that has (as yet) no known vaccine.
The next normal, then, will be largely defined by the safety measures needed to prevent transmission. From now on, all public-engaging businesses will need to consider three crucial, interrelating factors: how many customers can safely enter during a period of time, how long customers stay in your space, and revenue. At least one of these metrics will have to be adjusted when reopening.
This poses unique challenges for sit-in restaurants, cafés and bars. Interestingly, many of the differentiated models and design solutions borrow tactics from street food vendors, takeouts and even British allotment culture — in a trend we are calling the outside, inside.
At the same time, many eateries and food suppliers are offering at-home eating experiences, which aim to capture the atmosphere of restaurants and cafés outside their four walls (as best they can).
A connected trend is seeing many shuttered food brands pivot to focus towards education, and creating food communities. We are calling this one You Can All Eat.
The Outside, Inside
As social distancing measures will dictate the amount of people sharing space, eating and drinking out will by necessity become an even more intimate and private experience. Restaurants are, then, facing the double challenge of making their spaces appear both safe and welcoming.
The immediate safety measures that would reassure diners the most are hand sanitizers, spaced-out seating and, interestingly, operating specific hours for vulnerable people. These measures vary in cost and practicality. There are real concerns that many businesses will not be able to find the balance with financial viability, and whether they will be enough to attract customers.
Convenience elements borrowed from street vendors and takeout restaurants is also influencing inside dining, such as modular furniture that can be easily moved (and spray-cleaned). This could lead to more interiors which offer canteen-style service, with touchless payment options and pre-packaged meals and drinks. Spanish start-up Comeat has pivoted its service, now giving customers to access menus and place food orders in advance when reserving tables, in order to minimize food waste and streamline customer time within the space.
After a wildly successful trial, a riverside restaurant in Amsterdam has come up with a novel distanced dining solution by offering “Serres Séparées” (separate glasshouses) for up to two people to dine in. Though many restaurants lack the outside space to create separate spaces, expect to see similar safety measures adopted within restaurants such as widely-spaced seating, and physical partitions made from plastic drop cloth or plexiglass.
Food halls, which let multiple vendors share space and keep overheads down, could increase their growing market share. In cities like London, food courts were already succeeding by combining elements of takeaway and eat-in experiences, including clustered seating and disposable cutlery, which will likely see higher demand in future.
Acknowledging the unique place of restaurants in the cultural life of cities, there is growing support in New York for the public space outside premises transformed, at least temporarily, into outdoor eating spaces. This would require legislation to protect diners, restaurant workers and neighbouring residents alike. But to quote Marian Bull, “if the city found a way to open up streets to outdoor dining, while aggressively protecting and supporting the people preparing and serving the food, it could even lead us to reimagining public life as we know it.”
At-Home Eating Experiences
Takeout delivery services have proved immensely popular with the quarantined consumer, and the trend shows no signs of abating. To keep customers interested, eat-in and takeaway restaurants alike are levelling up their at-home game.
Chipotle recently unveiled its “Complete Customization” feature, allowing users to preview previously-unavailable combinations of meals and sides before ordering. It took off, partly due to promotion via TikTok. We anticipate more restaurants will offer similar interactive ordering options within home delivery services, which claim to add increased personalisation and capture the restaurant experience at home.
Multi-lingual ordering app Loqalli has leapt in popularity, by supporting restaurants to market themselves and their services to customers within their local area. Various apps such as OpenTable, Yelp and DoorDash have pivoted their services to streamline delivery and pick-up services respectively, all providing local businesses with crucial revenue streams before they reopen fully.
Fine-dining is in a uniquely tricky position. Expensive eating experiences are viewed as a luxury, and therefore rank low on people’s priorities during this time. Although articles encouraging people to elevate their dining rooms (even down to the cutlery used) saw an uptick earlier this year, virtually all of us would have real difficulty replicating the most important element — the gourmet food.
As Mark Canlis, owner of the namesake Seattle restaurant, put it, “fine-dining is not what people need right now.” By virtue of necessity, many high-end restauranteurs have diversified, experimenting with brand-new products and services, offering little bites of fine-dining to-go. Canlis re-opened as a drive-through, bakery and dinner box-delivery service. The menu changes daily and is hand-delivered by staff members (including their pianists) who would otherwise have been furloughed.
You Can All Eat
Restaurants and cafés of all sizes are using their platforms and cultural capital to become educators. By teaching people how to cook signature dishes at home, many restaurants are providing an essential service, while strengthening their brands and creating new food communities in the process.
Irena Stein is owner of Alma Cocina Latina, which she proudly describes as “a place that is full of education, it’s a very warm environment, very beautiful… for us, coming into our place is coming into our culture.” Alma now offers takeout versions of its most popular menu items, including part-baked breads to finish at home, guided by an online video.
Partnering with a local charity has also allowed them to feed refugee committees and Stein, in future, wants to tackle the growing number of food deserts in the area. This is part of Stein’s vision of “reimagining the future”, which repositions restaurants at the heart of local communities.
Dream of Wild Health’s simple mission, to ensure the Native American population stay connected to the food and culture of its ancestors, is one of the finest examples of food-focused educators in action. Working to increase food sovereignty and selling opportunities for their communities is its driving mission, but the organisation also runs a seed archive, hands-on workshops and a meal donation service. They have continued their work during the pandemic via virtual means, and hope to increase their reach even further in the future. You can support their work here.
Washington-based Immigrant Food opened at the end of 2019, around the corner from the White House. They were an instant hit, known for their “fusion bowls” blending world cuisines and “engagement menu”, which invites customers to donate to and volunteer with local immigrant advocacy groups. Their activism (or as they call it “gastroadvocacy”) continues despite the pandemic, and they were able to pivot their business model to delivery early on.
Taking cue from successful dinner-kit delivery start-ups like Pasta Evangelists, countless other restaurants are moving into meal kits, even if this is new territory. These are often accompanied by instructional videos. Northern Irish pizza restaurant La Dolce Vita created a video to publicise their pizza kits, which unveiled their “secret technique” — the kits have proved wildly successful, and will inform their longterm business model.
Another closely-connected trend is seeing restaurants promote wellbeing and balanced eating in the home. Belfast-based health food restaurant Tony & Jen’s have used their online Collective to ensure their customer communities stay engaged, informed and, most of all, well. Using a two-pronged approach, business owners Tony and Jen offer livestreamed workouts and Cook Alongs via Facebook Live. Keeping true to their core values, these are all for free.
We are even seeing high street brands and household names tap into this trend, by offering recipes to replicate their most successful menu items at home. Bringing the outside in, café chain Pret A Manger features soup, smoothie and snack recipes on their website. While temporarily closed, Pret also opened several sites to frontline workers only and donated masses of uneaten food to local charities, suggesting the role of restaurants in our society has already changed (if only temporarily).
Future food frontiers
The landscape of daily life as we knew it has changed dramatically. Bringing together elements from the three key trends above, we predict the following key developments in food culture.
Many major firms are adopting remote working as standard, going forward. Across sectors, experts are predicting a “radical localism” will emerge as a result, whereby people will invest more in brands and business on their doorstep, because they are spending more time there.
Given the recent boom in doorstep delivery grocery ordering and produce boxes, and uncertainty as to when spaces can open safely, the role of restaurants as educators and connectors will grow increasingly common. Brands that offer merchandise complementing their offer (such as La Dolce Vita, who plan to produce retail versions of their pizza kits; or influential lifestyle site-turned-retailer Food52) or find ways to charge for premium streaming content like masterclasses or workshops, will stand to do well. Venues that go one step further, and keep timeslots available only to vulnerable groups, will also benefit.
As quarantined consumers recreated their usual coffee rituals, we saw rises in the number of creative coffee experiences posted online (some even went viral) and subscription services. Brands would be wise to personalize these experiences, by including extras in the packaging (like Yes Plz), virtual content (like Sweet Bloom) or partner with local cafés on blends.
As we have seen, restaurants are combining sit-in and takeaway elements to great effect. To keep customers flowing and maintaining distance, restaurants will continue to offer moving meal experiences, by focusing on their to-go offer and pivoting their operations toward pre-packaged or a-la-carte menus. This could also involve partnering with other venues to offer a cohesive menu split across several different sites, or producing maps with recommended places in the local area.
