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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Coronavirus

The Food Tech Show: How One Seattle Chef is Surviving Through Innovation During the Pandemic

From his time as director of culinary research for Chicago’s Alinea to creating video game themed dinner nights at his own Seattle based restaurant “incubator” Addo, Chef Eric Rivera has long been known for his ability to innovate.

As it turns out, innovation becomes a required survival skill during a global pandemic like COVID-19, and ever since Seattle became one of the early breakout hotspots in the US, Rivera has been relying on the out of the box thinking to steer his business through a landscape shaped by coronavirus.

I caught up with Rivera this week to discuss the ways in which his business is adapting during the pandemic. We discuss the mandatory shut down of restaurants in Washington state, taking care of his employees during the crisis, launching his own delivery service and pop-ups for take out, offering remote cooking classes to people sheltering-in-place and more.

You can find Eric at his website and on Instagram at www.instagram.com/ericriveracooks.

As always, you can listen to the Food Tech Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download direct to your device or just click play below.

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Week in Restaurants: Now What?

Dining rooms are empty. Restaurants must go off-premises or go out of business. Some will go out of business regardless. And for every off-premise order fulfilled, quarantined customers get their food — but drivers, cooks, and others still working are at risk of exposure to COVID-19.

The restaurant industry is now undergoing the most disruptive crisis it has ever seen; one that has already permanently changed the business. At The Spoon, we’re as confused and frustrated as anyone else. But despite having a lot of questions and few answers right now, we’re continuing to provide coverage of the ongoing fallout, talking to founders, servers, companies, and the restaurants themselves in an attempt to make sense of everything. With that in mind, here are a few more pieces of news from the week. 

Stay safe. Stay home. Tip your drivers.

National Restaurant Association Asks for Restaurant Aid 

Earlier this week, the National Restaurant Association sent a proposal to the Trump Administration asking for aid for restaurants. The proposal, which The Spoon obtained a copy of, asks for direct financial relief for restaurants in the form of loans, insurance, and new tax measures. The Association noted it anticipates restaurant sales to decline $225 billion over the next three months.

Still No Delivery From In-N-Out

SoCal QSR legend In-N-Out announced this week it is closing its dining rooms. But unlike other larger restaurant brands, In-N-Out does not offer delivery — nor does it intend to now. As Nation’s Restaurant News points out, the chain has famously stayed away from third-party platforms (and even sued one), and for now will only offer drive-thru and takeout orders. Whether or not this lack of delivery becomes a hindrance for In-N-Out as California tightens its restrictions remains to be seen.

Domino’s is Hiring 10,000 Workers

Domino’s said it will need roughly 10,000 new workers, full and part time, to meet the demand for orders now that dining rooms are shuttered and customers are staying home. In a press release, the chain noted open positions include “delivery experts, pizza makers, customer service representatives, managers and assistant managers.” In a separate statement, Domino’s outlined the things it is doing to ensure cleanliness and sanitation, including contactless delivery, additional training for employees, and improved sanitation practices. The company is expanding its paid sick leave policy for employees during this time.

Sevenrooms Launches Direct Delivery Feature

Guest management platform Sevenrooms launched a new feature this week called Direct Delivery that gives restaurants more ownership over their customer data on delivery and takeout orders in the hopes of being able to offer them more relevant marketing. According to an email from Sevenrooms, the feature can be directly integrated into a restaurant POS system, too. For the next 90 days, existing and prospective Sevenrooms customers can add the feature on at no extra cost. 

 

According to Yelp and Foursquare Data, Pizza, Fast Food, and CSAs are Up in Wake of Coronavirus

There’s a lot of news swirling around there about how COVID-19 is hurting local businesses, and for restaurants, things are looking especially grim. But what does the data actually say? Yelp and Foursquare recently released some analysis of internal data that gives insight into how our relationship with restaurants, dining, and more is shifting dramatically during this very abnormal time.

Yelp notes that many of the changes in restaurant and food business are a direct result of “the home’s rising status as the place to eat.” Considering we’re supposed to be social distancing — and a growing number of restaurants are forced to close their doors to diners, anyway — that’s not exactly surprising.

The numbers are pretty bleak for restaurants. Yelp reports that U.S. consumer interest in restaurants has fallen by about 54 percent. They only looked at data from the data range of March 8 to 18, so the number has probably increased as more and more cities and states restrict dine-in capabilities for restaurants. Simultaneously, Yelp notes that delivery and take-out are “2X more popular than usual.”

What sort of food is popular during the corona-pocalypse? Basically, anything that is suited for delivery and pickup. That means dim sum restaurants, French restaurants, and other spots geared towards more leisurely meals eaten in the restaurant dining room are suffering. Sales from food trucks and breweries are also down.

The news isn’t bad for all restaurants, though — some are actually thriving in the new normal of COVID-19. Sales from pizzerias and fast food restaurants are up 44 percent and 64 percent, respectively. Unsurprisingly, Yelp says that sales of beer, wine, and spirits are up 63 percent. And in your daily dose of heart-warming news, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), or deliveries of farm produce, are up a whopping 405 percent.

Foursquare released its own data examining the change in foodservice foot traffic from February 19 to March 13. Like Yelp, it showed that QSRs are actually experiencing an uptick in traffic, though it cited a much smaller rise of 11 percent. Foursquare noted that QSR visits are down in areas with higher infection rates, like Washington state, but up in areas of the country with lower alert levels.

Seems like people still love their chicken sandwiches. [Photo: Foursquare]

Yelp points out that these shifts haven’t affected all of the U.S. in the same way. The impact is most significant near the coasts and more muted in the Midwest and Southeast, despite the fact that many cities and states have mandated dine-in closures in those areas. However, Yelp notes that every state reflects, at least to some degree, “the new reality of the coronavirus economy — that is, until it changes quickly again.”

To help restaurants struggling with this new reality, Yelp announced today that it would contribute $25 million to support local restaurants in the form of waived advertising fees and even free advertising.

That’s nice and all, but all the advertising in the world might not be enough to keep restaurants afloat. Some spots don’t have enough saved to keep paying rent/staff with significant diminished income. Others aren’t able to effectively pivot to a delivery- or pickup-only menu.

I don’t want to end this post on a glum note, but faced with cold, hard numbers, it can be hard not to feel scared for the future of local restaurants. So do what you can to support — go buy a gift card, tip a bartender virtually, or just place a pick-up order to support your favorite neighborhood spot. Maybe together we can help change some of these numbers.

‘Pare Down Your Menu’ and Other Advice for Restaurants Forced Into Delivery

States continue to mandate that restaurants shut down their dining rooms, and across the U.S. major chains are voluntarily switching to off-premises-only models. Those measures are necessary right now as we try to slow the spread of COVID-19. But where does that leave smaller businesses with less robust delivery programs or no off-premises strategies at all?

Plenty of restaurant tech solutions exist that can speed up and/or simplify a delivery strategy. However, I talked with several individuals this week who own and/or manage such solutions, and they made it clear that right now, there’s a whole lot restaurants can do to improve their delivery operations without forking over thousands of dollars on technology.

“Before you even get to the technology, what you really have to figure out is if you’re equipped to do off premises,” says Sterling Douglass, cofounder and CEO of Chowly. “What kind of food? What’s the menu going to look like? How are you going to staff it? Can you afford to staff it?”

Douglass, along with Alex Canter and Charlie Jeffers of Ordermark, and Jim Collins of Kitchen United, took time this week to chat with me and offer some simple steps restaurants can take today to kickstart their off-premises strategy right now.

1. Pare down your menu.

Pivoting to delivery doesn’t mean necessarily mean throwing your existing menu online and dishing up the same meals in to-go boxes. There’s a reason pizza was a delivery item long before any other kind of food went mobile: it travels well and it’s relatively simple to make. 

Thinking along those lines, restaurants should assess their existing menus and decide which items best translate to a to-go scenario. “What they need to do is trim down their menu, look at the items that are easy to procure and produce, so they can make a menu and put it up online and make easy items they can get out that are going to travel well,” says Jeffers. Fried chicken, for example, tends to hold up in transit. Scrambled eggs: not so much.

Jim Collins, who in addition to being CEO of Kitchen United also runs his own restaurant, suggests restaurants create things like family-style options and, if possible, include beer and wine options. “These things will help you stay relevant to the consumer as we move forward.”  

And if there’s leftover inventory from items you can’t make right now? Canter suggests getting creative about how you can repurpose and sell it:  “[Restaurants are] selling frozen items on Postmates. You can sell frozen soup or frozen take-home pizzas and cookie dough.”

2. Consider using multiple delivery platforms.

Unless you have the funds to power your own delivery operation (marketing, drivers, technical logistics), the reality for most restaurants right now is that they need to partner with third-party platforms like DoorDash and Postmates. If possible, they should partner with all of them.

“More and more, restaurants are realizing that to sustain a business solely based on delivery, they need to increase their volume and that typically means being on as many platforms as possible. Instead of picking one or two it’s really critical for restaurants to be thinking about an omni-channel strategy,” Canter says.

An eMarketer forecast said much the same thing a while back, noting that “more options for customers” would be a key growth driver for delivery in the future.

Companies like Ordermark and Chowly, and others legitimately do come in handy here: they will set a restaurant up on multiple different delivery platforms as part of a single package deal. Otherwise, the restaurant owner or operator would have to go through the same lengthy process for each service. “Opt in to all of the marketplaces but work with someone like ChowNow to get direct ordering working as well,” suggests Collins.

3. Adjust your staffing.

This one is honestly hard to write about, especially since earlier this week, the National Restaurant Association estimated the loss of 5–7 million restaurant industry jobs. “At my family’s restaurant, we’ve had to tell the bulk of our staff to not come in,” says Canter. “That means for us, we’re a sit-down restaurant [with] waiters, bus boys that are no longer needed to support a delivery-only situation.”

He adds that running a delivery-only business requires “a very minimal skeleton crew,” which sadly means owners and operators are going to have to make some hard decisions around staffing in the near future. “This is unfortunately the situation at hand. It really comes down to repurposing your best employees to shift them to focus on the takeout and delivery side of the business.”

4. Accept that delivery is “a must” right now.

We can’t have a discussion about restaurant food delivery without at least acknowledging how controversial and frustrating third-party platforms are for restaurants. I’ll spare you yet-another rant, though, because right now, the unfortunate reality is that the majority of restaurants need to partner with these platforms right now.

“At this point, when restaurants are no longer able to provide a dine-in experience, the only way to stay open is by having a delivery program,” says Jeffers. “Most restaurants don’t have the marketing spend or the following to survive on their own.”

“If you’re a restaurant and you’re not doing delivery, you need to immediately implement a program. Just being on DoorDash and Postmates, you now exist to the people who use these apps. It’s not just worth it, it’s a must,” Canter adds.

Right now, the restaurant industry is banding together to help restaurants accept and implement this new reality of off-premises business, whether its by offering tech solutions, support for workers, and help hotlines to answer questions.

“You’re not alone,” Canter says to businesses. “Every restaurant is trying to figure out the best way to get through this.”

 

With Stadiums Shut Down, FanFood Shifts to Restaurant Curbside Pickup (and Drive-In Movies!)

Sports leagues and games large and small were among the first parts of everyday entertainment to be decimated by the COVID-19 outbreak. No sporting events (and no concerts!) means no one is going to arenas or stadiums. This is a problem for FanFood, a startup that enables food delivery directly to your seat from concession stands at large venues.

So FanFood is doing what scrappy companies do in times of crisis: it is pivoting. And like so many other software companies in the food tech space, FanFood is temporarily pivoting to help restaurants get food to customers now that dine-in is no longer an option in many cities and states.

FanFood launched a program this week to help restaurants do curbside delivery of orders. For the next 60 days, FanFood is waiving the set up and subscription fees for its service. Once onboarded on to FanFood’s software platform, restaurants can take orders and instead of delivery, they can rush food out to the curb where customers can pick it up.

For some restaurants, FanFood might be a more economical option as we learn more about some of the shady strings third-party delivery services are still attaching to restaurants during this downturn.

“We’re not like Grubhub,” Carson Goodale, CEO of FanFood told me by phone this week. “We don’t take commissions.”

Instead, FanFood splits the ten percent convenience fee added to each order 40/60 with the restaurant. So on a $20 order, the two dollars get split with 40 percent going to FanFood and 60 percent going to the restaurant. After the 60 day trial, there is a subscription fee to use the service, which is typically around $119/month.

Implementing curbside service could also help mitigate the spread of the virus because restaurants can use their existing staff to expedite food rather than having a steady stream of unknown delivery people from various services coming through the door.

While FanFood is being nimble in the face of a global pandemic, its ability to innovate might be outpaced by the severity of the virus’ spread. California just ordered all of its residents to shelter in place. Yes, they can go out for food, but with more restricted movement, Californians might just rely on delivery to get restaurant meals. Should these type of shelter in place orders expand across the country, there won’t be much need for curbside pickup.

But that hasn’t happened yet, and in the meantime, FanFood may have another ace up its sleeve: Drive-In Movie Theaters. Don’t laugh! With traditional movie theaters shutting for social distance reasons, drive-in theaters are experiencing a bit of a resurgence since everyone stays inside their car. With no end in sight for this crisis, who knows, perhaps drive-ins will become the new “stadiums” in which we experience sporting events.

Ox Verte Pivoted from Office Catering to Home Office Meal Delivery in Three Days

What a difference a five days can make. A couple of weeks back, NYC-based office meal delivery service Ox Verte had a nice business going. The certified B corp counted a couple thousand offices as customers and had a substantial run rate. Then COVID-19 came on strong in New York and people were told to work from home. In a matter of days, Ox Verte’s revenue disappeared to $0.00.

But Ox Verte Founder and CEO Jessie Gould didn’t panic or quit, she mobilized and pivoted the company completely. Instead of delivering food to offices, they would deliver it to home offices.

This week, in just three days, Ox Verte launched a new website (oxverte.nyc) and a whole new line of business. The startup now offers delivery of a box set of fruits and veggies ($95) , snacks ($4), as well as Ox Verte-made bowls ($16.50 each). Since it is now delivering to homes, the company also offers a menu of meals for families ($65 or $145, depending on size). Because it is a B Corp., all of Ox Verte’s food is plant-forward (though not strictly vegetarian) and locally sourced.

I spoke with Gould by phone this week and asked if its supply chain had been disrupted and she was quick to say no. “There is just a mismatch right now because there’s a run on grocery stores,” Gould said, “But fields haven’t stopped growing food. Our supply chain is intact and they [food producers] would like us to take more.”

I also asked if there were new sanitation or cleaning procedures that are being mandated by NYC since the outbreak. “DOH [Department of Health] procedures in NY pretty strict to begin with,” Gould said, though they have instituted contactless delivery as well as new cleaning protocols for the containers carrying food.

The pivot hasn’t come without its own challenges, however. Ox Verte had to lay off three full-time employees, and stop work with a number of contractors. Gould hopes these layoffs are temporary and that those affected can be re-hired as the business grows.

To grow that business, Gould is targeting the employees of Ox Verte’s previous corporate customers to see if there is a way those companies can subsidize meals for its people working from home. Ox Verte isn’t abandoning the corporate market altogether. The company plans to just build up two lines of business after this pandemic subsides.

In the meantime, Ox Verte’s story can hopefully provide a ray of hope for other businesses impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak. It might be mercenary, but it’s also true that crisis brings opportunity. For Ox Verte, it forced them into a new line of business. Now we’ll see if there’s an actual business there.

UPDATE: This story originally incorrectly reported Ox Verte laid off 9 people. It was only three. We regret the error.

Goodr Delivers Groceries and Surplus Food to Hungry Students, Seniors in Atlanta

“Hold on, I have to get my credit card.” Jasmine Crowe, CEO of Goodr, was grocery shopping in the middle of our call earlier today. She was at the store not stocking up her own pantry but buying grocery staples for one of the dozens of families that are using Goodr’s expanded program to get fresh food during this tumultuous time. 

Goodr is an Atlanta-based startup providing the logistics needed to redistribute surplus food from large businesses (think: Coca Cola, Chick-fil-A, etc) and to non-profits feeding the hungry. And with the coronavirus outbreak shutting down schools and, consequently, taking away free lunch from students, Goodr is stepping up to make sure that kids in the Atlanta area still have healthy food to eat.

To feed students, Goodr is working with school cafeterias which are still preparing packaged meals. The company picks up and delivers these meals to designated apartment drop-off zones in areas where many students live. They’re on track to deliver meals to over 40,000 students in the Atlanta school district.

Separately, Goodr is introducing another new service to drop off groceries to families who can’t afford to (or aren’t physically able to) shop themselves, or can’t make it to food pantries. “It’s like Instacart, but it’s free,” Crowe explained to me. Since the grocery delivery service doesn’t rely on surplus food, Goodr pays for the groceries through individual sponsorships (you can do it too, if you like).

In addition to grocery and student meal drop-off, Goodr is also delivering fully prepared meals cooked by partner chefs to seniors that might be hesitant to venture out and purchase food, or don’t have the financial ability to do so. Crowe said that the seniors have the option to ask that the food be dropped off outside their door to reduce the risk of contamination. Finally, the company is increasing the frequency of Goodr’s pop-up surplus food grocery stores.

These emergency initiatives are all happening on top of Goodr’s current surplus food deliveries from offices to nonprofits. “It’s still business as usual,” Crowe told me.

To increase their delivery capacity Crowe said that Goodr has hired 10 new drivers. They try to hire drivers that were recently laid off from their jobs and pay them $20 per hour. Crowe told me that Goodr uses the Google Maps Paperboy API to direct drivers through the most efficient routes. Currently, one driver can deliver groceries to six or seven families in an hour and a half. I’m from Atlanta and, knowing the traffic situation there, that’s pretty incredible.

Goodr typically gets a lot of its donations from offices and restaurants, many of which are closed or in the process of closing. Crowe told me that right now, they’re sourcing “a little bit from everywhere.” The company is still getting donations from some food partners, like Mercedes-Benz and Coca-Cola, and is also taking food from companies that are going out of business and clearing out their fridges and pantries. 

Crowe doesn’t know how long those donations will last, however, or how long Goodr will be able to keep the lights on. Like many other food companies, it is not immune to the struggles that come with our new COVID-19 reality.

Nonetheless, Crowe said they’ll keep doing what they can and paying their team for as long as they can. “I’m a believer in good Karma,” Crowe told me as she finished her grocery shop. Then she had to go deliver the food to an Atlanta family, or senior, or student, and do it all over again.

Delish to Host Instagram Live Cooking Classes for Parents and Kids

If you’re a parent working from home with kids out of school, chances are you’re on the lookout for creative ways to distract them — hopefully while they learn some things.

Maybe one of those things will be how to cook. Recipe platform Delish is launching an Instagram Live series to teach parents and kids how to cook together.

According to an email from Delish, the series will be hosted by the platform’s editorial director Jo Saltz and her children. Episodes will air each weekday at 1:00pm ET and last 15 to 20 minutes (the first episode aired today). If you can’t tune in at that time, episodes will be saved in a Highlights section of Delish’s Instagram so you can watch when you’re ready.

Each #CookingTogether lesson will feature “kid friendly” recipes like pizza waffles and something called puppy chow (which I just had to Google and must say, I now want very badly).

Healthy? Not exactly. But kids can be picky, and if you’re already fighting a battle trying to keep them educated and entertained it’s not exactly the time to try and sell them on broccoli, too.

I don’t have kids myself, but I think Delish’s #CookingTogether series is a smart way for the recipe brand to make the best of the current situation — and differentiate themselves from other recipe site competitors. While people are quarantined at home they’re looking for both inspiration on what to cook and free ways to entertain themselves (and their children).

I bet before the coronavirus pandemic has died down, we’ll be seeing a lot of recipe services experimenting with new tactics to cater to the new normal.

Could the COVID-19 Outbreak Save Meal Kits?

When I get anxious or stressed out, my natural response is to cook elaborate meals for myself. Following complex recipes soothes me.

But I understand that that is absolutely not the case for many folks out there. Nonetheless, in a time where we’re not supposed to be leaving the house, there’s only so much delivery you can order in — and so many meals of spaghetti you can make.

That’s where meal kits could come in handy. They’re delivered to your door (no venturing out to grocery stores!), contain ingredients for a balanced meal, and give folks who might not be super comfortable in the kitchen some training wheels to get them cooking. On top of that, most meal kit services are at least slightly cheaper than ordering delivery, especially when you factor in tip.

I reached out to a few meal kit companies to see how the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent social distancing is affecting them. And the news was uniformly positive! Unlike many food-related companies, meal kits are actually seeing a boost in sales.

Purple Carrot’s founder and CEO Andy Levitt told me that the company had seen a “sharp increase in demand for our plant-based meal kits since COVID-19 has been shifting consumer behavior.” A representative from HomeChef emailed me that the company was seeing an “unprecedented increase in orders” with “more people cooking at home.” Over email, Blue Apron’s CEO Linda Findley Kozlowski also noted that the company had seen “a sharp increase in consumer demand.” No one would disclose exact numbers.

All of the companies I contacted emphasized that their employees were following CDC guidelines to ensure food safety during sourcing and packing. One benefit of meal kits is that the ingredients are packed in a warehouse, which means there are also fewer people touching your food and less chance of contamination than in a supermarket.

As we’ve written about time and again on The Spoon, the meal kit industry has been struggling for quite a while. Will this recent boost in subscribers be enough to sustain meal kits? Levitt is optimistic; he anticipated that the demand would continue even after the COVID-19 pandemic dies down.

I’m perhaps less so. The basic problems for meal kits — managing disparate supply chains, encouraging customer stickiness, making recipes easy enough for anyone to cook, and competing against food delivery — will still be present in our post-coronavirus future.

True, maybe some folks who are trying out meal kits now will get hooked and decide to continue on that path. But overall, if meal kit companies want to survive I think they’ll have to continue to innovate to cater to shifting consumer needs by focusing on retail, enabling more customization, and creating easier, faster recipes.

But for now, meal kits are filling an important need for consumers who want to cook more at home, but aren’t sure how. It’s a small but noteworthy silver lining in the time of COVID-19.

My Elderly Parents Kept Going to the Grocery Store, So I Finally Instacarted for Them (and It was Great!)

Parents, especially elderly ones, can be stubborn. They have their routines and will stick to ’em by gum. For my septuagenarian parents, it’s going to their local grocery store, which they love (my dad actually had his 65th birthday party there).

But as the COVID-19 shroud continues to unfurl across the nation and people are being asked to stay at home, going to the grocery store, especially if you’re elderly (sorry, mom!), seems like not such a great idea anymore.

We’ve already seen some grocery stores create special, early hours where only seniors can shop, which is a good idea. But honestly, I would prefer if my parents didn’t have to go out in the world at all, at least for the next few weeks.

I’ve been telling them about online grocery shopping since this pandemic began, and how it could be an option for them to get food without leaving their house. They politely nodded and said that yes that was an option, and then went to the store anyway. My mother in particular is pretty tech-savvy, so the concept of getting groceries online wasn’t scary to her; I think it was more about their routines.

As this pandemic transmogrified a full-on international crisis, I upped the pressure on my parents to give up the grocery store. But they kept going. I don’t live near them (otherwise I’d shop for them), so finally yesterday I Instacarted for them. And it was fantastic.

I live in a rural area where Instacart isn’t available, so I hadn’t used the service yet. But after downloading the app, I was able to plug in my parents’ address, find their local store, and start shopping.

My Instacart Shopper was super helpful at finding product replacements.

My mom sent a list of items and I placed the order. While I was expecting deliveries to be delayed at least a few days, surprisingly there was a same-day window. Aces!

What I appreciated was how my shopper, Julia, was communicative throughout the whole process. Understandably, a lot of what I ordered was out of stock, so she sent suggestions and photos of options (or lack thereof, almost all of the bread was gone). Finally, I left instructions for her to just drop off the groceries on my parents’ front porch (no touching!). Julia sent me a pic when the delivery was done and I FaceTimed my parents to let them know.

I’m deeply aware that we are asking more of gig workers and delivery people than ever before. In this case, Julia is literally helping keep my parents fed. Instacart has a pretty crappy track record when it comes to treating its workers well. Given that their shoppers are on the front lines of this pandemic, Instacart better damn well step up and do the right thing (all of the tip I left should have gone to Julia). It would also be cool if Instacart offered something similar to Chatt.us, wherein you could buy groceries for someone else in need (because with all the restaurant closures and job losses, there is going to be a lot of need).

I realize that many of you reading this are probably saying Duh, Chris, we know all about Instacart. Great! I’m sharing this story because in these strange times, we can re-think how we use our existing resources to help others. Anecdotally, I’ve heard from a bunch of friends who are struggling with their parents going out for groceries. If you are concerned for your elderly parents, and have the means and can use a tool like Instacart or Safeway online or Walmart for them, maybe consider it.

Will this experiment push my parents into online grocery shopping? I don’t know yet, they say they are stocked for a few weeks. But hopefully when I bring up Instacart again, they won’t just nod their head politely.

We’re spending every day tracking the impact of COVID-19 on the world of food. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our analysis and hear stories from the front lines.

Guided Cooking Deals to Help You Eat Better While Social Distancing

Being in the business of covering food news, it’s easy to be all doom and gloom right now. While the COVID-19 outbreak is certainly causing huge disruptions in the foodservice industry, there are some silver linings.

The coronavirus — and subsequent social distancing measures — could have a real effect within our own kitchen. Reuters reported last week that quarantined folks in China have been spending time in their kitchens and learning to cook, leading to increased downloads in recipe apps and guided cooking services.

If you’re also cooped up at home and looking to flex your cooking skills, there are plenty of great services out there to help you learn to be a better chef. And good news — some are even offering deals!

We’ve listed some below, and will be updating the list as we learn of more. If you notice any are missing please leave us a comment or email tips@thespoon.tech.

Plant Jammer
If you stocked up on a bunch of vegetables but aren’t sure exactly how to turn them into meals, Plant Jammer could be a useful guide. The service, which is available via a website or an app, uses AI to generate vegetarian recipes based on what you have available at your house (which could be very helpful if you’re trying to make use of what you have without hitting up the grocery store).

As of today Plant Jammer’s paid features will be free to all users. According to an email from the company, they will assess how long to continue the offer based off of the progression of the coronavirus outbreak.

Photo: Hestan Cue

Hestan Cue

If you have a smart cooking system Hestan Cue at home and want to finally learn how to use it to make fancy restaurant meals at home, you’re in luck. The company, which makes a connected cooktop and pan set that connects with your phone to guide your cooking, is now offering a free Hestan Cue Cooking School. The first course is all about Mastering Eggs — other courses have not been announced yet. If you want to follow along, you can sign up here.

Photo: Now Serving

Bookstores

It’s never been a better time to invest in cookbooks: you get new recipes to try, great reading material, and are able to support local bookstores that have had to shutter to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Now Serving, L.A.’s only cookbook bookstore, is trying to beef up sales by offering free online shipping. If you’re in the area you can also get curbside pickup. The Book Larder, Seattle’s only cookbook bookstore, is also offering free shipping on orders over $50.

Photo: ckbk Instagram

ckbk
Looking for cooking inspiration and bored of your usual staples? Online subscription service ckbk lets you browse a bunch of cookbooks virtually — sort of like a Spotify for cookbooks. Interested folks can use the code WECANCOOKTHROUGHTHIS to get a 30 day free trial to ckbk, which allows them to browse 360 cookbooks and 85,000 recipes to find new recipe inspiration.

Photo: Blue Apron

Meal kits
Some of us need a little more hand-holding during our cooking process. In that case, several meal kit services are offering discounts. Blue Apron is offering $60 off through March, and Hello Fresh has a variety of promotions going (including $80 off over four weeks).

Do you have a guided cooking service offering a deal to help folks cook during this trying time? Give us a shout in the comment section or drop us a line.


Toast Launches a Relief Plan for Restaurants

Restaurant tech company Toast just announced it has set up a fund to support restaurants and restaurant workers as COVID-19 spreads and businesses are forced to close in response.

The fund comes in the form of Rally for Restaurants, an online directory of restaurants nationwide. Users can search the directory, choose a restaurant, and donate to that business by purchasing one (or several) gift cards. Toast said in an email that it will match up to $250,000 in contributions.

Right now there are over 18,000 restaurants listed on the platform from cities large and small across the U.S. Many more can be added, of course. Currently there are over 600,000 restaurants in the U.S., and many of them independent businesses whose very livelihoods are at stake right now.

Restaurants that are not currently on the platform can submit their business here. If you’re a customer who just happens to love a particular restaurant you don’t see listed, you can submit it here. Toast will confirm the restaurant’s information with the business itself before adding it to the platform.

Separate from the fund, Toast also said it has eliminated software fees for restaurant customers for the next month and will provide those customers with free access to its digital ordering, marketing, and gift card programs for three months. Additionally, the company has set up an online resource center that includes content on how to manage the changes currently sweeping across the restaurant industry.