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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Coronavirus

The Spoon team is working hard to bring you the latest on the impact of COVID-19. Bookmark this page for our full archive on the pandemic and how the food industry is embracing innovation to fight back.

On April 6th, The Spoon had a full day virtual summit on COVID-19 strategies for food & restaurants. You can watch all the sessions from our virtual strategy summit here.

You can also check out this COVID-19 resource page for food and restaurant industry.

Nespresso Adds Touchless Features To Its Momento Machine

Since the start of the pandemic, the words “contactless” and “touchless” have become the new buzz words in food tech. Nespresso Professional is the latest company to accommodate this COVID-19-prevention protocol: Today, the company announced the release of three new touchless features for the Nespresso Momento machines.

The Nespresso Momento machines are commonly found in office settings, so these new features aim to provide a safer coffee-making experience for those returning to work. The Nespresso Momento machine and its new features are available for businesses on the Nespresso Professional website.

One of the machine’s new features is an app, which allows a user to control the machine from their phone. A user must insert a capsule (so it’s not completely touchless), and then they are able to select the cup size and choose the recipe without ever touching the screen. The machine has a QR code that users scan with their phones to connect to the app.

The machine can also be set to automatically brew a cup of coffee when a particular pod is inserted. A user can pre-set the machine to brew a certain size or recipe with different coffee pods that the machine will automatically recognize when inserted. Lastly, the machine can be set to force users to clean the touch screen before using it again. A “lock screen” appears after every use, and it must be disinfected to use the screen.

Amongst Nespresso Professional, countless other companies have also expanded to oblige with COVID-19 safety precautions in the workplace. Pepsico released a Sodastream Professional over the summer that allows users to select different unsweetened, carbonated beverages through a mobile app. Minnow’s pods, which are essentially Amazon lockers for food, can be placed in a workplace to provide a solution for contactless food pick-up and delivery. With no clear end to the pandemic, these new contactless features don’t seem to be going away anytime soon.

In November, Nespresso Professional will additionally be launching a single touch capsule filling dispenser that is compatible with the Nespresso Momento machine.

Some NYC Restaurants May Close Again Due to COVID-19

Nine New York City neighborhoods are at risk of having to shut down both indoor and outdoor dining due to rising COVID-19 cases, according to a Sunday press briefing from Mayor Bill de Blasio. Pending approval from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, NYC will close schools and nonessential businesses in those nine zip codes, which are in Brooklyn and Queens, starting Wednesday.

The affected neighborhoods are those neighborhoods where the test positivity rate for COVID-19 has been “above 3% for the last seven consecutive days,” Mayor de Blasio told CNN.

The proposal comes just one week after NYC allowed restaurants to reopen dining rooms at 25 percent capacity. If it goes through, restaurants in those nine zip codes would have to return to offering delivery and takeout meals only.

The news is just the latest blow to NYC restaurants, which have taken some of the hardest hits of the industry-wide meltdown brought on by the pandemic. Recently, the New York City Hospitality Alliance said that 87 percent of the 457 restaurants, bars, and nightclubs it surveyed could not pay their rent for the month of August. And at the end of last week, the Alliance released a new report jam-packed with some unsettling stats. As of Aug., employment in the restaurant industry was only 55 percent of its pre-pandemic level from Feb. 2020. Meanwhile, nearly half, or 44 percent, of NYC restaurants have used outdoor seating. It need hardly be said that shutting down that outdoor dining will be another serious blow to business across those nine zip codes.

Offering delivery and takeout bring in some revenue, but as we’ve discussed before, those formats are not yet enough of a lifeline to save a business. In some cases, delivery — an area plagued by controversy and sky-high commission fees for restaurants — can do more harm than good to a business’s margins.

Nor do many independent restaurants have the money to invest in some of the recent developments around off-premises ordering, like GPS-enabled pickup systems, sophisticated digital-ordering technology, and native delivery platforms. Meanwhile, Paycheck Protection Loans are running out, which means so is any hope of governmental assistance. Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the updated $2.2 trillion HEROES Act, which would include $120 billion in relief for independent restaurants. However, it is not expected to be taken up by the Senate.  

Contactless: ‘Easier Said Than Done’

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Achieving a contactless restaurant experience when it comes to the drive-thru lane is easier said than done, according to QSR Magazine’s 2020 Drive-Thru Study, released today in partnership with SeeLevelHX.

Every year, QSR Magazine’s study looks at various aspects of drive-thru performance, from speed of service to order accuracy to the effectiveness of digital menu boards. This year’s study includes all of those things as well as some elements that wouldn’t have made it in there if not for the COVID-19 pandemic.

The so-called contactless restaurant experience is one of them. If you follow the restaurant biz or are a regular reader of The Spoon, you’ll know that restaurant tech companies large and small have lately been championing software that enables contactless ordering and payments. Instead of a customer and staffer passing a credit card back and forth, guests order and pay from their own mobile phones. 

That goes some distance in keeping unwanted germs at bay, but as we’ve said before, there’s no such thing as a truly contactless restaurant experience right now. And as QSR’s data suggests, there’s no such thing as a truly contactless drive-thru, either. 

The survey found that 80.1 percent of all drive-thru orders were handed to the customer directly by the employee. In 16.4 percent of the cases surveyed, the order was placed on a tray. Rounding out the math, 1.3 percent of orders were placed on a window, and 2.2 percent were labeled “other.” Use your imagination. 

QSR’s survey found that 78.1 percent of employees wear gloves at the drive-thru window, while 91.3 percent wear masks. But the survey’s basic conclusion to all of this is that contactless “proves easier said than done” when it comes to the drive-thru lane.

Unlike a physical restaurant space that can be altered to make room for pickup shelves or lockers, there’s not much in the way of architectural adjustments a drive-thru window can absorb that would make much sense. And actually, one could argue that too many alterations done in the name of contactless service would just confuse things, slow down service, and impair order accuracy. 

If the restaurant industry wants a truly contactless drive-thru experience, it’s going to have to do some major overhauling when it comes to the design of the drive-thru process. Burger King hinted at this a while back with its new restaurant prototype that includes a conveyor belt system for retrieving food and a good deal of re-architecting of the physical store layout, among other things. That’s the first of what will likely be dozens more examples over the next year of what the drive-thru of the future will look like. As to whether the industry can ever achieve one that’s truly contactless, stay tuned.

Device of the Week: TableYeti’s Virtual Tip Jar

Besides having the best company name I’ve heard of in a while, hospitality payments company TableYeti also makes a virtual tip jar product called the “Tap to Tip BOX.” The device, which is powered by TIPJAR’s software, can be mounted to a wall, placed on a countertop or stationed at any other location in a bar or restaurant that’s highly visible to customers. 

On its website, UK-based TableYeti says the BOX is meant to replace TRONC, which is the tipping pool system used in many bars, cafes, and restaurants around the country. Essentially it’s the digital version of the big jar of cash you’ll find next to many cash registers at eating and drinking establishments. Instead of dropping a few bills into the jar, you tap a credit card.

It’s a compelling product in this day and age when so much of the restaurant biz is going digital. It also comes at a time when the concept of a virtual tip jar is a little more widely known, thanks to various efforts to help restaurant industry workers during the height of lockdown. TableYeti’s product joins multiple other iterations of this idea, not just in the U.K. but all over the world.

TableYeti’s BOX is only available to U.K. businesses at the moment, though a U.S. equivalent is bound to surface at some point in the near future as restaurants get further digitized and cash gets increasingly less popular.

More Restaurant News

Food ordering platform Olo this week launched Serve, a revamped version of its ordering platform restaurants can use to consolidate order flows and manage their digital storefronts. The redesigned platform, which Olo says enables faster ordering and checkout and higher conversion rates, is available to all restaurant customers using the Olo platform.

Fast-casual chain Fazoli’s put something of a twist on the dark kitchen/virtual restaurant concept this week. The chain had been using some of its restaurants as dark kitchens to test a delivery-only chicken wing product. Said product has proven to be so popular Fazoli’s said this week it will now go on the chain’s regular brick-and-mortar menu. Which just goes to show you that the definitions of “ghost kitchen” and “dark kitchen” continue to evolve.

Taco Bell just launched the “Taco Gifter” on its website and mobile app that lets users, uh, gift tacos to one another. Pick an item, pay for it, and T. Bell will generate a unique URL the recipient can use to retrieve the order. Somehow I suspect this will be popular with those who need last-minute gift ideas for the holidays.

NYC Ghost Kitchen Company Zuul Launches a Virtual Food Hall

NYC-based ghost kitchen operator Zuul announced this week that its virtual food hall, Zuul Market, is now live.

The new initiative is a cross between an online marketplace and a white-label delivery platform. The marketplace sells a limited number of items from restaurants that are currently members of Zuul’s ghost kitchen facility in SoHo, including Junzi Kitchen, Stone Bridge Pizza & Salad, and Sarge’s Deli. Zuul has also worked with its member restaurants to co-create virtual brands, which are also available through the marketplace. For example, Stone Bridge also operates the virtual-only Rival Sandwich Co.

All food is prepped and cooked in the SoHo kitchen facility. Zuul then delivers the food at scheduled times to drop-off points located in office buildings as well as residential properties around NYC. Zuul controls the entire process, from order processing to fulfillment to the last-mile delivery.

The idea is to provide a more efficient system for delivery, where meals from multiple restaurants going to multiple different people can be bulked together and taken to a single location. To do this effectively, Zuul has partnered with Silverstein Properties and Broad Street Development, both major property developers in NYC that own both office buildings and residential properties. Zuul Market menus will be available to residents and employees throughout those companies’ properties. For example, Silverstein integrated Zuul Market into its Inspire app for tenants as a building-wide amenity across its buildings. 

How successful this delivery strategy is in office buildings depends a lot on how many people actually wind up going back to the office. Right now, it’s not many. But residential properties could be a lucrative area for delivery and commerce during the pandemic, and probably after. Folks are spending more time at home these days, and with colder weather coming, that’s likely to increase. So whether it’s automated convenience stores, contact-free delivery pods a la Minnow, or a virtual marketplace like Zuul’s, more and more companies are finding new ways to bring the restaurant experience into the home. 

Zuul said it plans to build additional food hall partnerships with both restaurants and properties in addition to more ghost kitchen facilities across NYC in the future.

Ghost Kitchen, Meet the Automat

Inexplicably, I’ve always wished I could have experienced the Automat in its heyday. Created at the tail-end of the Nineteenth Century, Automats consisted of a wall of cubbies containing simple food and beverage items users could unlock for a nickel. It was essentially fast food before fast food existed.

Fast forward to 2020, and it looks like I may yet be able to experience the concept, albeit a higher-tech version of it.

As we chatted on this week during our Editor podcast, the Automat is making a comeback. That’s thanks to restaurant companies launching cubby systems that are equipped with temperature control functionality and that can be unlocked with a user’s own smartphone. Brooklyn Dumpling Shop is the latest to iterate on the old concept, following in the footsteps of Minnow, Brightloom (née Eatsa), and others.

The resurgence makes sense, given the restaurant industry’s sudden shift to off-premises formats and simpler foods that travel well. Which is why I can think of no better location for Automat 2.0 than outside a ghost kitchen.

One of the major selling points for ghost kitchens is that they allow restaurants to operate without incurring the costs of a front-of-house operation. The ghost kitchen as we know it is also specifically designed to serve off-premises formats. Up to now, that’s been primarily delivery, but the pandemic has generated so much interest in ghost kitchens that we’re now seeing different styles of the concept emerge, including those that offer pickup. Kitchen United lists both options on its website, as does DoorDash (for its DoorDash Kitchens facility). Having a pickup option means restaurants can still take advantage of the ghost kitchen format without necessarily coughing up the sky-high commission fees associated with delivery orders.

At the same time, the pandemic continues, and even if it were to magically disappear tomorrow, our heightened expectations around cleanliness and “contactless” restaurant experiences are here to stay. Which is to say, customers are going to want minimized human contact for restaurant transactions for a long time to come. 

It doesn’t get more minimized than the Automat. By way of a hypothetical example, imagine a virtual deli that has a kitchen space from which it fulfills online orders. It would fulfill delivery orders, but also maintain a cubby system outside to hold any pickup orders. Throw a few tables and chairs near the machine where those who want can eat onsite. Other than the smartphones and the digital ordering, the setup isn’t hugely different from the original Automat concept.

Of course, some ghost kitchen companies choose to locate their facilities in former warehouse districts that don’t get much foot traffic. But as we outlined in our recent Spoon Plus report on ghost kitchens, that’s the exception, rather than the norm right now. Most ghost kitchen operators will tell you location matters, and the closer you can locate one to customers, the better.

And actually, we’re already trekking towards this automat-in-a-ghost kitchen future. Besides the above examples, Starbucks launched its Express stores in 2019 that act as ghost kitchens for nearby locations and include a wall of pickup lockers onsite. Other fast food chains have whittled their dining room concepts down to more to-go-friendly formats, and many of these orders are now being fulfilled in ghost kitchens.  

Automats were originally a precursor to fast food. These days, it seems like fast food may yet prove to be the forerunner to Automat 2.0.

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Location-based Picnicking

You may remember a year or so ago when I wrote about Domino’s partnering with a company called what3words to delivery food to street corners, parks, and other non-traditional addresses. 

It seems what3words is at it again with food delivery, this time partnering with Honest Burgers in London to deliver to random swaths of grass in the city’s Clapham district.

What3words’ platform divides the entire world into 3m x 3m squares, which are GPS coordinates. An algorithm then converts the coordinates into three-word addresses to give each a unique (and often bizarre) name (see image above). With this technology, you could literally choose a random patch of a park sans any notable landmarks or other identifiable items and get your burger delivered to your exact location.

The program with Honest Burgers is only running for a few days and restricted to Clapham. But with more of the restaurant experience taking place outside the four walls of the business, a technology like this could become huge. That’s assuming the restaurant biz makes it through winter and and once more heads to outdoor spaces.

Cracker Barrel’s gone the ghost kitchen route. The company said at its earnings call this week that it plans to convert one of its locations in Indianapolis, Ind. to a ghost kitchen that will handle large-scale catering orders as well as some individual orders placed via third-party delivery services. The store will also be used to help fulfill delivery orders from other nearby Cracker Barrel locations during busy times, like the upcoming fall/winter holiday season.

Meanwhile, Shake Shack said this week it has expanded curbside pickup to 40 percent of its stores, and that roughly one third of all app orders are being placed for curbside. The company has plans to extend curbside to 50 of its locations by the end of September, and is also exploring the possibility of more drive-thrus and walk-up windows.

The New York City Council passed a bill that lets restaurants add a “COVID-19 surcharge” of up to 10 percent to a customer’s bill for up to 90 days after indoor dining reaches full capacity. In other words, for the foreseeable future. The bill is an attempt to help restaurants generate additional revenue as the struggle to keep the lights on continues.

The CDC’s New Findings Put Restaurant Tech In the Hot Seat Once Again

The big restaurant news over the weekend was a new set of findings from the CDC that suggest a higher risk for COVID-19 among those who eat in restaurant dining rooms.

The inescapably obvious point is that the findings are worrying for restaurants planning to reopen or increase the capacity of their dining rooms. That in turn brings up a less-obvious point, that the so-called contactless technologies out there that say they’ll make restaurants safer have yet to prove their value.

As has been extensively covered, the CDC’s report found that adults who test positive for COVID-19 were “approximately twice as likely to have reported dining at a restaurant” than those who tested negative.

These are exactly the types of findings the restaurant industry has tried to avoid, and it has used a lot of tech to do that. When dining rooms first started to reopen, restaurant tech companies rushed to bring contactless “kits” — software that enables digital menus, ordering, and payments — to market. There are now so many of these offerings it’s often hard to distinguish one from the next.

To be super-duper clear, no company is claiming they’ll fend off COVID-19 with a QR-code enabled menu feature. It’s also worth noting that we don’t have extensive data yet on how many restaurants (including those in the CDC study) have actually implemented contactless software, which is expensive and a time-consuming process.

While we don’t know how vast contactless implementations are, we know restaurant tech companies use phrases like “safe,” “contact-free,” and “end-to-end contactless experience” all over their marketing copy and product-speak nowadays. 

But giving a piece of software the “contactless” label and actually eliminating (as opposed to minimizing) human-to-human contact in the dining room are two different things. Customers might be able to browse a menu, order a meal, and pay for it from their own device, but someone still has to run the food to the table, refill drinks, and step in if there is a problem with the order. Humans still cook and plate the food, and even spreading tables further apart won’t necessarily stop the spread of coronavirus. (One study found that infectious droplets can spread up to 16 feet away from the infected person.)

In their current form, contactless restaurant tech solutions can’t totally eradicate human intervention in the restaurant experience. Even if it could, there are still the other diners to contend with (see above), which means contactless tech can’t completely wipe out the risk that someone will get COVID-19 from going out to eat. Hence the CDC’s latest findings.

What contactless tech can do is speed up the order and pay process, help restaurants keep labor costs lower (fewer staff to pay), and even drive more people to restaurants’ native mobile apps instead of third-party delivery platforms. It can also speed up formats like curbside pickup and drive-thru, areas where restaurant operators should perhaps spend the bulk of their energy implementing contactless tech.

For now, at least, all signs point to off-premises formats like drive-thru and takeout as the areas where restaurants should be spending the bulk of their energy, period. The National Restaurant Association just released new figures that note one in six restaurants have closed either permanently or for the long term. I doubt the CDCs findings will make that number any less bleak anytime soon. For the present, restaurants should continue to focus on developing their off-premises formats, whether that’s faster curbside service via contactless tech, a ghost kitchen, or even a makeshift drive-thru lane.

As far as the dining room is concerned, it may be time for bolder moves than a QR code. By that I mean more robots to do things like run food and wash dishes, and more creative ways of arranging the dining room layout. In other words, it’s probably going to take more than iterative tech to get the restaurant biz back on its feet.

Ocean Hugger Has Big Plans to Re-Enter the Plant-Based Seafood Market

Plant-based seafood startup Ocean Hugger said this week it is in the midst of planning a relaunch, according to an interview with Food Navigator. 

In June, the New York-based company had to cease operations, citing the COVID-19 pandemic as the reason. Up to that point, Ocean Hugger ran a promising business selling its “tuna” and “eel” products to foodservice businesses. As we’re all too aware these days, the foodservice industry has been one of the hardest hit by the pandemic, and Ocean Hugger found itself facing no sales and had to stop operations.

Now, however, it appears the company is planning its comeback. An update from August 31 on the Ocean Hugger website states that, “Over the coming months, we will be exploring paths to relaunch bigger and better than ever.”

How the company plans to do that is under wraps for now. Food Navigator notes that new developments should “enable the business to relaunch next year.” Co-founder David Benzaquen suggested to the publication that Ocean Hugger is exploring ways to re-enter the market and also hinted at new products. He gave no further details.

It’s reasonable to imagine that, with the right business model, Ocean Hugger will be successful in its attempt to relaunch. Investment in alternative proteins has already reached over $1.1 billion in 2020, and both plant- and cell-based seafood startups have made many a headline recently. General Mills invested $32 million Good Catch at the beginning of 2020. BlueNalu, which grows cell-based seafood in bioreactors, nabbed a $20 million investment in February. More recently, S2G ventures said it would be investing $100 million in seafood and ocean health startups including alt-protein.

Ocean Hugger has so far raised $500,000 from a funding round in 2019. Benzaquen said in his interview this week that seafood is one of the most obvious areas of animal protein to disrupt from a sustainability and animal welfare angle. If others agree, that investment figure for Ocean Hugger could go up significantly in the future.

Holo Industries Provides Futuristic Holographic Menu Solutions

Pre-pandemic, most people didn’t think twice about checking out at a supermarket or ordering in a restaurant. Now, after entering our PIN numbers or holding a menu, the new normal involves vigorous hand scrubbing and sanitizing. Given that, dozens of companies are now rushing to create more contactless experiences in public spaces. One such is Holo Industries, a brand of Convergence Promotions that provides holographic and contactless-touch solutions that can be used in place of elevator buttons, restaurant menus, check-out kiosks, and more.

I spoke with Glenn ImObersteg, the president of Convergence Promotions, on the phone this week about recent developments within Holo Industries. The development of the brand’s contactless-touch hologram units began in March 2020, just as COVID-19 hit in the U.S. COVID-19 spiked the demand for technology like this, and the company was able to have these units ready for use by May 1, 2020.

The hologram interface is made possible through the pairing of Neonode Touch Sensor Modules, the ASKA 3D Holographic plate from Asukanet, and other components from Holo Industries. The holographic menus are touch responsive, and when your finger touches a button mid-air, it triggers an audible response from the unit.

Holographic Kiosk/Restaurant Demo - HI-DEMO-KR

Contactless solutions alone won’t be able to save struggling restaurants from going under, but they may be able to reassure customers — who demand transparency around safety nowadays — and get more foot traffic into the dining room. So far Sevenrooms, Paytronix , Payjunction also offer variations of contactless order and pay systems.

Contactless ordering and payment may be a key component to easing customers back into dine-in restaurant service. A touch-less holographic kiosk removes the risk of coming into contact with germs, bacteria, and pathogens, and does not require cleaning.  Holo’s units can be used as a menu, a method of paying for a meal, or even used to broadcast the menu from inside the restaurant to the outside. 

The contactless and holographic units from Holo Industries currently cost about $2,500. Currently, the products from Holo Industries are being used by elevator companies, and the company is also piloting a kiosk program with two undisclosed restaurant companies. Holo Industries has yet to receive outside funding but is currently looking for investors to enable its expansion. The Sacramento-based brand will become its own company separate from Convergence Promotions in October 2020.

Deliveroo and Waitrose Launch a 30-Minute Grocery Delivery Trial

Following similar recent moves from other third-party delivery services, Deliveroo is expanding its presence in the world of online grocery shopping. At the tail-end of last week, grocery chain Waitrose announced it will pilot a 12-week program with Deliveroo to get groceries to customers around the UK in as little as 30 minutes.

The news comes just as Waitrose’s longstanding deal with online grocery retailer Ocado comes to an end. From Tuesday, September 1, Ocado will instead deliver groceries from Waitrose rival Marks & Spencer. 

Deliveroo will ferry more than 500 Waitrose items to customers “in as little as 30 minutes,” according to the Waitrose press release. Customers will be able to place orders via Deliveroo from one hour after the shop opens to one hour before it closes. Waitrose says the partnership is meant to “compliment” its own two-hour grocery delivery service.

The Guardian noted over the weekend that Waitrose has seen more than 100,000 extra orders for online groceries since the UK’s pandemic-induced lockdown started. Online grocery orders across the UK have almost doubled thanks to the pandemic. It’s a similar story to what the U.S. is currently experiencing where grocery e-commerce sales hit $7.2 billion in June.

Given all that, it’s no surprise that third-party restaurant delivery services like Deliveroo are diversifying their sales channels to include grocery. Deliveroo, in particular, has struggled to keep business strong during the pandemic as restaurants shutter permanently. For example, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK’s antitrust watchdog, finally approved Deliveroo’s long-scrutinized deal with Amazon on the grounds that Deliveroo would have had to exit the UK food delivery market without the Seattle giant’s investment.

Adding more grocery services is one way to make up for some of the lost restaurant sales. New sales channels may also give third-party delivery services a fighting chance a profitability, something that keeps getting eroded by fee caps, battles over worker classification, and other regulatory issues.

It’s a narrative we’re familiar with in the U.S., too. Uber Eats now delivers groceries, and DoorDash just announced its own grocery delivery service in addition to its partnerships with convenience stores.

The initial Deliveroo-Waitrose trial, which also starts September 1, will serve about half a million households and, if successful, will extend to more locations in the future.

Front-of-House Igloo? Chicago Asks Residents to Redesign the Outdoor Dining Experience for Winter

We’ve said it multiple times in the last couple of weeks: winter is coming for outdoor dining. And when it arrives, restaurants may be even more limited as to how they can serve dine-in customers in the midst of a pandemic and reduced capacity mandates for the dining room.

Chicago, a city that’s no stranger to harsh winters, is preemptively dealing with this situation by challenging residents to redesign the outdoor restaurant experience. Dubbed the Winter Design Challenge and done in partnership with IDEO, BMO Harris Bank, and the Illinois Restaurant Association, the contest is looking for outdoor dining ideas that can adhere to safety restrictions around COVID-19 while still allowing restaurant customers to eat outdoors.

Participants can submit ideas through September 7. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office told NBC Chicago that winners will receive $5,000 each and “opportunities to start their idea at restaurants and bars around the city.”

Sam Toia, president and CEO of the Illinois Restaurant Association, added that, “We need out-of-the-box thinking to address the hardship facing our industry.”

We’ve seen some of that outside-the-box thinking already in the restaurant industry, from outdoor self-service kiosks to greenhouse-like buildings that enclose individual tables. But winter weather provides a whole new set of challenges that a few heat lamps may not be enough to solve. 

A panel of local judges will pick one winner from the following categories: outdoor structures; indoor-adjacent spaces; and cultural change/other ideas.

Ideas are already pouring in, including heated tent rentals, blankets, solar-powered pergolas, and actual igloos. There are also several suggestions to simply not open, which underscores how divided the general public remains about eating in restaurants in the time of a pandemic.

Submissions will be accepted through September 7 at 11:30 PST. All suggestions should address on-premises dining, not delivery or takeout.

Whatever winning solutions emerge from this could provide a blueprint for other cities around the country when it comes to addressing the upcoming winter. Chicago may have a reputation for harsh weather, but it’s hardly the only city in the U.S. to endure snow, ice, and sub-zero temperature. It wouldn’t be surprising if more cities launch their own challenges in the coming weeks in a collective effort to pull the restaurant industry through the changes and prevent even more from having to permanently close their doors.

Survey: Restaurants Should Expect to Serve 4 Types of Customers in the Coming Months

Roughly one in three Americans look forward to dining in restaurants again over the next three months, but different customers have different standards for what the new era of eating out should look like. So says restaurant tech company Sevenrooms, which today released a new survey entitled “Restaurant Reckoning: Dynamic Diner.”

The survey, conducted with third-party research firm YouGov PLC, polled 1,327 U.S. restaurant customers at the end of July. As its title suggests, the pandemic has created new types of diners with different sets of priorities. Sevenrooms has divvied these up into four categories:

  • “The Pick-Up Patron:” More than one in four survey respondents, or 27 percent, said they will not feel comfortable eating in a restaurant dining room until a vaccine for COVID-19 is found. Nearly one in four, 23 percent, will stick to takeout orders for the rest of 2020. 
  • “The Safety-Savvy Consumer:” More than one in five, or 22 percent, of those surveyed want a detailed outline of a restaurant’s safety protocols, including physical barriers between tables, at-table hand sanitizer, and having their food covered when brought to the table.
  • “The Tech-Conscious Contactless Diner:” A smaller percentage, 13 percent, said they would only dine in a restaurant that uses contactless dining solutions like virtual waitlists, QR code-enabled order and payments, and contact tracing technology.
  • “The Carefree Guest:” Despite nationwide restrictions around indoor dining, a healthy number of respondents, 29 percent, said they are comfortable with the format. Another 42 percent said they are comfortable with outdoor dining.

The outdoor dining stat, though, is an important reminder of a situation most restaurants around the U.S. will soon face: winter is on its way, and once it arrives, outdoor dining will be uncomfortable in some locations, impossible in many more. It may very well be that colder weather will mean the Pick-Up Patron category gets a lot larger and the number of “carefree” guests lowers alongside the temperature.

The survey also recommends that restaurants double-down on collecting customer data that can better tell them which of the above customer types they serve most. That directive makes sense, given that Sevenrooms is a guest management platform that emphasizes the value of restaurant customer data. But it brings up a good point: with the restaurant experience going more and more digital, it’s time for restaurants to rethink their relationship to customer data.

Speaking in today’s press release, Sevenrooms CEO Joel Montaniel also suggested that agility is crucial for restaurant operators right now: “Our research has made one thing clear: operators need to be flexible,” he said. “Whether it’s in regard to outdoor dining, virtual waitlists or contactless order and pay – every guest has different needs.”

With colder temperatures and a lot of uncertainty around both the pandemic and the future of the restaurant industry, that flexibility will remain a must-have for restaurants for the foreseeable future. The good news is, since restaurants were allowed to slowly reopen their dining rooms, we’ve seen no end of creativity when it comes to serving guests while keeping them socially distanced. No doubt we’ll see even more of that as the restaurant industry transitions into a new season.

Can Ghost Kitchens Save the Vanishing Restaurant Biz?

“Perhaps we should stop using the term ghost kitchen. Ghosts are rarely seen, but ghost kitchens? Well, they are popping up everywhere.”

Spoon Editor Chris Albrecht was half-kidding when he wrote that line earlier this week, but he might have been onto something. Ghost kitchens, a concept that only really started turning heads one year ago, are practically unavoidable these days in a conversation about the restaurant industry. 

In the past few weeks alone:

  • Foodservice distribution giant US Foods launched its own ghost kitchen service that will provide restaurants “guidance and resources” to open their own kitchens.
  • Gig economy engagement platform ShiftPixy unveiled a ghost kitchen incubator that connects restaurants with physical kitchen space and the tech to run a ghost kitchen.
  • Dubai-based iKcon, raised $5 million to expand its kitchen network and the proprietary tech stack that goes with it.
  • Fat Brands announced that Johnny Rockets, a brand it intends to purchase for $25 million, will expand via ghost kitchens, many of them inside the kitchens of other Fat Brands restaurants.
  • Sweetgreen said it is testing the ghost kitchen concept out by working from a Zuul kitchen in NYC.

And those are just the highlights.

What’s noteworthy here is not that a bunch more restaurants and food industry companies have hopped aboard the ghost kitchen train. It’s that there are a fast-growing number of options when it comes to where and how a restaurant can open a ghost kitchen. With a company like iKcon, for example, a restaurant’s ghost kitchen essentially becomes a franchisee. Renting space from Zuul or another third-party kitchen provider is another way. Operating one brand out of the kitchen of a sister brand is perhaps the most intriguing concept on this list, and one we’ll see a lot more of in the future.

Add to all that choices around location, technology, and figuring out if they even have enough demand to warrant a ghost kitchen, and restaurants have a lot to consider in today’s off-premises-centric world.

What’s more, those restaurants are being forced to consider their choices when it comes to ghost kitchens. The pandemic has decimated the dine-in business for both large restaurant chains and smaller independent businesses. Recovery from the fallout will be slow, and the idea of most customers returning to brick-and-mortar restaurants seems less possible each week. Given those factors, more restaurants will have to consider either supplementing their existing operations with ghost kitchens or pivoting their entire model to a virtual, delivery-only one.

I suspect this is just the beginning when it comes to types of ghost kitchens that rise out of the ashes of the on-premises restaurant experience. We’ve already seen restaurants employ countless amounts of creativity when it comes to running a restaurant during a pandemic and trying to create a concrete restaurant experience out of virtual tools. With the pandemic still very much a part of our lives, we will now see that creativity head for the ghost kitchen.

SipScience Raises Money to Reinvent the Bar

SipScience, a data analytics company specifically for the hospitality industry, is preparing to launch itself into the contactless payments realm by launching a new platform, Sip. 

According to a press release sent to The Spoon this week, there are two sides to Sip. The consumer-facing one comes in the form of an app that connects to a user’s digital wallet. The app lets said user find nearby bars and open a tab from their own mobile device, through which they can order and pay for drinks. When it launches, Sip will be available at participating bars and venues across the U.S. Bonus: those who sign up for a subscription will get half off their first 50 drinks ordered through the app.

For venues, such as bars and restaurants, the app is a new way to drive more traffic, and the accompanying SipSync analytics engine gives these places more data on in-venue customers. Brands, too, are provided with real-time purchasing data, which is not something a payments app normally provides.

The company said this week it had raised $1.3 million in SAFE notes. There is no official launch date yet for the app, which makes sense, given the state of in-person hospitality venues. Bars in many states remain closed, as to venues built to hold hundreds of people. 

Granted, no sane person would spend much time in a bar right now. But SipScience’s news suggests that folks start flocking back to their local watering holes, they’ll find a far more tech-driven experience waiting.

Restaurant Tech ‘Round the Web

Starbucks launched a digital traceability tool this week that lets customers learn more about their coffee, including where it came from and traveled, and the farmers and roasters involved in production.

Domino’s is hiring 20,000 more employees. That’s on top of the 10,000 the pizza chain said it was hiring right after the pandemic hit, and just goes to show you that the company’s delivery-centric business is alive and thriving. 

Grubhub has launched an online petition to commission fee caps and is reportedly going to run an ad campaign that calls the fee caps “food delivery taxes.” Grubhub says fee caps result in higher costs for consumers and ultimately hurt restaurants. 

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