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COVID-19 Summit

April 7, 2020

COVID-19 Summit: How a Global Pandemic Will Reinvent the Restaurant Menu

For the last few weeks — really since states began mandating dining room closures — one of the most commonly uttered pieces of advice for restaurants has been to rethink their menus. Between a global pandemic, a looming recession, and unprecedented disruption to daily life, it seems the one piece of restaurant operations that’s pretty much never changed suddenly needs a major overhaul.

That point was reiterated yesterday at The Spoon’s COVID-19 virtual summit. In particular, two big points stuck out: the menu needs to teach consumers how to eat healthier and it needs to be redesigned for the off-premises format.

Robert Egger, the founder of LA Kitchen, talked about the need to rethink the menu in times like these and focus on trimming portions down.

“The tyranny of the plate is something we need to reject,” he said on a panel with Spoon Publisher Mike Wolf and chef Mark Brand. He was talking specifically about the four-compartment meal that represents the standard American diet, where “the big piece of meat” is accompanied by vegetables and starches.

Egger’s suggestion is that restaurants and institutional foodservice businesses distance themselves from that format and look to menu models that create more integrated meals that are plant-forward and rely on alternative proteins for sustenance. Think of the grain bowls or falafel bowls served up by chains like Sweetgreen or Tender Greens, two companies Egger referenced in his talk. These, he says, can give customers a “robust, flavorful replacement” for the standard American diet that relies so heavily on animal proteins and gigantic portions.

Brand agreed. “If you continue to feed the beast, which is literal obesity and diabetes, you’re already part of the problem,” he said. “Why are you opening a restaurant to kill people?”

Instead of reacting to what they think customers want to see on the menu, restaurants should instead try to lead customers to choices that will be better for them. That could mean offering an alternative protein to chicken or not serving avocado toast in a region that doesn’t grow avocados. It definitely includes serving smaller portions and getting away from what Eggar called “the groaning plate.”

In many cases, it will also mean preparing food that can travel easily. With restaurant dining rooms closed for now, businesses are having to quickly pivot to off-premises models that serve delivery and takeout meals. One mantra I’ve heard often in my conversations over the last few weeks is “pare down your menu” to make it friendlier to the off-premises format.

Moving your menu to an off-premises setting is more than just a matter of uploading your existing one to Postmates et al. Restaurants have to factor in what food travels well and how they can offer variety without inducing decision paralysis, where a customer sees so many options they freeze up.  

At the event yesterday, Chowly’s Sterling Douglass said there was no magic number of menu items when it comes to offering choice without that decision paralysis. Rather, it’s a matter of simplifying the choices themselves. For example, an item called “Chicago-style Hot Dog” will be selected more than a hot dog that requires customers to take an extra step by selecting “Chicago-style” from a list of styles. 

And, of course, the food has to travel well from the restaurant to a customer’s house. That’s where Eggar’s grain bowls could prove themselves really valuable. A plate of chicken parmesan sliding around a box and getting more lukewarm with every minute doesn’t exactly make for an appetizing to-go order. A bowl of greens, quinoa, and other items that were meant to be mixed together makes a whole lot more sense when it comes to food that travels. My bet is that it’s cheaper to produce, too.

As restaurants continue building and modifying their models to fit in this strange new world or social distancing, paring the menu down to a few simpler, healthier options could prove the most beneficial thing for everyone’s health, not to mention their wallets.

April 7, 2020

COVID-19 Summit: Restaurant Owners Need to Act on the Paycheck Protection Program Now

Struggling restaurant operators in this country have a lot to worry about right now. And not to add one more thing to that list, but if you are a struggling restaurant owner, you need to stop what you’re doing and go learn about the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) that was put into place as part of the federal response to the chaos the COVID-19 pandemic is causing.

Don’t believe me? Then listen to Ryan Palmer, a lawyer and partner at Lathrop GPM who specializes in restaurant law. He joined us as a featured speaker during our COVID-19 Virtual Strategy Summit today and had a lot of great advice for restaurant owners trying to weather this storm.

Paramount among that advice was the need to learn about the PPP, a loan program devised to help small businesses keep workers employed. These are loans that are made by your lender (not the Small Business Administration), but you need to act quickly to get one. There’s $349 billion dollars for relief in there but when it’s gone, it’s gone. So if you are looking for federal relief you need to get your application in now.

In addition to being fast, restaurant owners need to be smart. As Palmer explained, the whole situation is very fluid and changing by the day. It would behoove people to call up their lawyer to help them navigate all of the ins and out of the program.

You can also use your lawyer to help you negotiate new terms in contracts that pre-corona were probably off the table. Palmer said a good place to start would be with your landlord because, as he said, “A landlord wants tenants in its spaces and a tenant wants to be in the space.” The landlord may want to keep that space occupied instead of having the space go dark or need to be re-rented and therefore be more flexible in terms of when rent is paid, etc. If you’re a franchise, Palmer said you can talk with your franchisor about continuing fees and advertising fees.

Another suggestion from Palmer, which is actually pretty evergreen, is to check your insurance. As restaurants are pivoting to delivery or even curbside pickup, make sure that your business and employees are properly covered. As a good follow up, you should also check your local ordinances and lease to see what types of conveniences (drive-up window, curbside drop off, etc.) that you can actually provide for your customers.

The whole chat was actually very illuminating and filled with solid, boots-on-the-ground type advice; you should watch the whole thing (select Legal Considerations & Strategies for Restaurant Operators During COVID-19 from the drop down menu in the upper right of the embedded player below). We may not know what the long-term effects of COVID-19 will be on the restaurant industry, but learning about the PPP is something every restaurant owner should be doing right now.

You can watch the full session with Ryan Palmer below or check it out on Crowdcast.

The Spoon's COVID-19 Summit: Ryan Palmer on Financial Relief For Restaurants During COVID-19 Crisis

April 6, 2020

COVID-19 Summit: How to Get Up, Running, and Efficient With Restaurant Delivery/Takeout

At today’s jam-packed yet socially distanced COVID-19 summit, we’ve been exploring the different strategies food businesses can take to survive the sudden changes brought about by coronavirus, a stopped economy, and massive disruptions to daily life. And no other sector in food has been hit harder than the restaurant industry, thanks to mandatory state closures of dining rooms that are forcing businesses to reach for off-premises ordering formats as a lifeline or die trying. 

So how exactly to you grasp that lifeline to keep your business from going under? Today, The Spoon’s Managing Editor Chris Albrecht talked with Sterling Douglass, co-founder and CEO of POS integrator Chowly to find out. Chowly’s platform simplifies (and automates) the process of a restaurant taking orders from multiple sales channels, so Douglass knows a thing or two about restaurants and off-premises orders. Here, I’ve broken his advice down into three different steps restaurants can take in order to get up and running faster and more efficiently with their own off-premises strategies. 

The Spoon's COVID-19 Summit: Sterling Douglas & Building an Off-Premise Business

1. Prepare your staff.

Douglass mentioned that Chowly is currently working with a lot of restaurants that are implementing delivery and takeout strategies for the very first time. And the very first thing he tells them has nothing to do with software or delivery services. Rather, he recommends restaurants examine and prepare their staff for the changes necessary to operate right now.

Consider what roles your workers will play now that there is no more dining room? That doesn’t change much for those in back of house, but what about servers? Can you afford to keep them and, if so, how can they be used to help the off-premises business along?

One thing that changes for everyone is scheduling. Right now, for example, many workers have children at home because of school closures. A workers’ normal schedule might need to be adjusted. Restaurants need to work with their staff to try and accommodate the different situations brought on by social distancing and shelter in place orders. 

2. Get set up with delivery companies. All of them.

Setting up a delivery program isn’t simply a matter of plugging DoorDash into your POS and getting some takeout boxes. Accounts with third-party delivery platforms can, especially now, take weeks to set up — a hardly ideal scenario right now. Chowly, along with other integration companies like Ordermark and Olo, compress a lot of this timeframe so that restaurants don’t have to go through the set of moves for each different delivery partner.

Those decisions include which platforms to work with (all of them, for now), how they want to be integrated (tablets versus the pricier but more efficient direct POS integration), and, once up and running, what food they’ll serve.

There’s also menu pricing to consider. Right now, independent restaurants and smaller chains without the deep pockets of, say, Starbucks, don’t get much negotiating power when it comes to commission fees they must pay delivery aggregators. Douglass suggested in the session that higher priced items on third-party marketplaces. That puts the burden on consumers, which could be risky in a recession-bound economy but does shift some of the financial stress off the shoulders of restaurants themselves.

Unless you also run your own driver fleet, the process for setting up delivery and takeout is fairly similar. Douglass said Chowly encourages potential customers to do both.

3. Get virtual.

Virtual restaurants have gotten more popular and more numerous over the last year. Imagine al of the above steps — delivery integration, a smiple menu, etc.—applied to a restaurant concept that doesn’t have a dining room and relies on delivery and takeout to reach customers. 

In today’s session, Douglass pointed out a few such concepts, most notably those Grubhub has been doing with restaurant group Lettuce Entertain You and non-restaurant food brands like Bon Apétit and Whole30. The rise of ghost kitchens has also led to many more virtual restaurants, and even virtual restaurant networks like Keatz.

This is not a step most restaurants are even in a position to consider right now. But it doesn’t but it doesn’t hurt to think about long term strategies, particularly since we don’t yet know what the restaurant industry is going to look like when we all finally emerge from our houses again. Right now, getting your operations ready for delivery and takeout and getting on delivery platforms should be the number one priorities for restaurants for the foreseeable future.

April 3, 2020

Newsletter: How to Support Restaurants Right Now Without Endangering Everyone’s Health

To do my bit in supporting restaurants right now, I’ve been ordering from them once every few days for the last couple weeks. More times than not, it’s been a logistical circus that winds up costing a lot of money and, especially lately, unnecessarily putting workers’ health at risk.

Case in point: Tuesday night I ordered online from a local burger place. While the system gave me a “curbside pickup” option, there was no curbside at which to actually park once I arrived at the restaurant. Rather, I joined a crowd of other people clustered in front of the restaurant. A lone worker frantically ran in and out of the restaurant calling names as she tried to determine which order belonged to which customer. No one wore gloves and no one was standing six feet apart.

The inconvenience of the experience is the least problematic part of this example. Far more unsettling are the financial and health risks of running an off-premises business when you’re not an off-premises restaurant. Through no fault of its own, that burger place is not equipped to efficiently manage the volume and logistics of a curbside business. It’s never had to until now.

Restaurant owners and industry folks have long argued that the dine-in experience differs greatly from a to-go operation, and that one can’t simply flip a switch and be asked to transition from one to the next without a hitch. And yet that’s exactly what thousands of restaurants across the country are at this moment being forced to do. And what you get is a scene like the other night, where there isn’t enough staff to even pick up the phone, let alone manage the influx of orders going out and customers waiting. Staffers are interacting with way too many people than could possibly be safe, and everyone’s health is at risk. There’s also evidence that an off-premises strategy isn’t even financially fruitful for many restaurants.

Is it really worth it or is there another way to support restaurants that desperately need a lifeline as dining shutdowns and COVID-19 ravage the industry?

The answer, fortunately, is “yes.” Shortly after states began mandating dining room closures, charities and funds began popping up online. Last week I wrote about virtual tip jars for servers and bartenders out of work right now. And some of these funds go directly to restaurants themselves.

The James Beard Foundation has launched a Food and Beverage Industry Relief Fund that accepts donations from corporations, foundations, and individuals to provide micro-grants to independent food and beverage businesses.

Dining bonds and gift cards are another route. The Dining Bonds campaign was started by a group of industry professionals to get immediate relief funds to restaurants. It works like a savings bond: guests purchase a bond at today’s value rate and can redeem it for full face value at a later date. Support Local lets you purchase restaurant gift cards from independent businesses in a number of cities. They can be redeemed now or, if you’re not feeling up for off-premises, later on, when dining rooms open again.

Initiatives like these aren’t a magic bullet. But they do provide some other avenues for supporting restaurants, whether you’re trying to avoid other people or just looking for a way to give a little extra help.

Running a Restaurant? We Want to Hear From You

If you’re reading this and also happen to be a restaurant owner, operator, or worker, help The Spoon help you. We’re currently collecting stories, tips, and ideas about what it’s like to actually live and work in the restaurant biz during this strange, unsettling time.

That includes anything from new strategies to make delivery and takeout more efficient to how you’re keeping yourself and your workers safe. And, this being The Spoon, any stories of how you’re using tech to help cope with this situation are most welcome. But before the tech comes the people, which is why your voice is the most important piece of our ongoing coverage and narrative.

Drop us a line a tips@thespoon.tech or DM me via Twitter.

It’s Almost Here: The COVID-19 Virtual Strategy Summit

If you’re a restaurant, food business, or food tech company, join us next week for a virtual summit on how to do business in the age of coronavirus.

On Monday, April 6 The Spoon will host the COVID-19 Virtual Strategy Summit for Food and Restaurants. No travel required to get there and 100 percent socially distant, this online summit will features talks and fireside chats from leading experts including:

  • Chef Mark Brand – Founder of Save-On Meats and creator of the Token Program to feed those in food insecure situations
  • Caesare Assad – CEO of FS6
  • Sara Roversi– Founder of the Future Food Institute
  • Dana Gunders – Executive Director of ReFED
  • Phil Lempert – the SuperMarket Guru
  • Paul Freedman – Professor of History at Yale University and author of American Cuisine: And How It Got That Way
  • Ryan Palmer – Partner at Lathrop GPM and chair of firm’s Restaurant, Food, and Hospitality group

Register today.

Keep on truckin’,

Jenn

April 3, 2020

Food Tech Show: The ‘Looking for Bright Spots in a Dark Time’ Episode

Needless to say, when you’re talking and writing about coronavirus all the time, you can get a little down.

So on this week’s podcast, we thought we’d focus on some bright spots, highlighting stories of people and companies who are innovating to help others or are just well-positioned to succeed in an otherwise down time.

  • TheGreatAmericanTakeout Launches ‘Back for Seconds’ Campaign
  • Pepper’s pivot to help B2B food suppliers sell direct to consumers
  • Shoppable recipe platform Anycart launches just in time to help folks cook different kinds of meals while sheltering in place.
  • Solar cooking specialist GoSun launches portable water filtration to become a full-solution provider for the doomsday prepper crowd
  • How Frontline Foods lets people donate meals from restaurants to food workers.
  • The ever growing list of restaurant tech deals to help struggling restaurants

Finally, a reminder we’re hosting a virtual COVID-19 strategy summit for food and restaurant people on Monday and we’ll be talking to smart people with good ideas for dealing the crisis.

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

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http://media.adknit.com/a/1/33/smart-kitchen-show/m2kl4n.3-2.mp3
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Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.

March 23, 2020

Join Us for the COVID-19 Virtual Strategy Summit for Food and Restaurants

During this pandemic that has radically reshaped pretty much everything in our lives in the blink of an eye, we keep coming back to one question here at The Spoon: How can we help?

And so it’s with that in mind that we decided to have a virtual summit to discuss ideas and come up with strategies for navigating the COVID-19 pandemic for the food and restaurant industry.

This virtual summit, called the COVID-19 Strategy Summit for Food & Restaurants, will take place on April 6th and feature experts who can talk to and share perspectives about the operational, business, legal and historical impact that coronavirus is having on the food business. While no one has navigated a worldwide pandemic like COVID-19, we think bringing together some of the industry’s biggest thinkers to share their perspective and some advice, we can maybe help some of those scrambling to figure out this new normal.

The event, which we’re working on with the great people from the Future Food Institute is in just two weeks, and we’ve already assembled some amazing speakers, including:

Chef Mark Brand – Founder of Save-On Meats and creator of the Token Program to feed those in food insecure situations

Sara Roversi – Founder of the Future Food Institute

Paul Freedman, history professor at Yale University and author of American Cuisine: And How It Got That Way

Ryan Palmer – Partner at Lathrop GPM and chair of firm’s Restaurant, Food, and Hospitality group

Dana Gunders – Executive Director of ReFED and recognized expert on the problem of food waste

The event is free to attend and you can register here. We’re using Crowdcast as the platform, which is highly interactive and allows audience members to ask questions share ideas with speakers and other attendees, so make sure to come with questions..

Also, if you are or know a world-class expert on some aspect of the food or restaurant business that could provide hugely valuable to business owners or employees in this new world, we’re still looking for a couple more speakers so drop us a line (no product pitches, please). If you have an idea about how you’d like to support us by getting the world or tapping into your network, we’d like to hear from you too.

Finally, as you know The Spoon team has been working every day trying to uncover stories of people innovating on the front lines of the food world during COVID-19. If you have a story or news you think we should know about, please let us know.

Stay safe and healthy and we’ll see you (virtually) on April 6th!

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