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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Starbucks

Impossible Sausage Sandwiches Now Available at Starbucks and Burger King

Starbucks announced today that it has added the Impossible Breakfast Sandwich to its menu. The sandwich, which Starbucks says is now available at “the majority of Starbucks locations across the US,” features Impossible’s plant-based sausage.

This is the second move into breakfast for Impossible in as many weeks. Burger King, which launched the Impossible Croissan’wich earlier this year, announced last week it was going national with the item for a limited time.

Impossible is really starting to flex it plant-based muscles and it expands its heme-pire at just the right time. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused production shortages and raised new ethical concerns about eating meat, and during this time, sales of plant-based meats have taken off.

For its part, Starbucks has more than one plant-based partner on its dance card. While the company is launching an Impossible sandwich in the U.S., it has hooked up with Beyond for a breakfast sandwich in Canada, and Starbucks in China will be using Beyond meats as well.

Getting on the menu at Starbucks will certainly give Impossible’s brand a boost. And if people like Impossible, there are more options than ever for them to eat it at home. Impossible has, err, beefed up its retail pipeline over this year, and launched its own direct to consumer sales site earlier this month. Though the sausage only just debuted at CES this year (which feels like a lifetime ago), the Starbucks and Burger King partnerships show that it has scaled up production fairly quickly.

Now we’ll see if the Impossible breakfast sandwich rises and shines.

Starbucks to Close Some Sit-down Cafes to Focus on Pickup-only Locations

Starbucks is accelerating its plans to shift many of its stores to a takeout-only format, according to an article today from the Wall Street Journal. The coffee mega-chain will “close, renovate, or move” 400 traditional cafes in the U.S. and Canada over the next 18 months and open 40 to 50 pickup-only stores over the next year and a half.

While the pandemic has accelerated the pace towards this to-go model, the shift itself isn’t new for Starbucks. In 2019, the chain opened its first Starbucks Now stores featuring very limited seating, an automated pickup system, and a focus on digital orders. And in a letter from the end of May, company CEO Kevin Johnson said the company would be reformatting many stores to cater to off-premises orders as part of its “Bridge to the Future” reopening plan. 

Starbucks has also claimed that 80 percent of its orders were to-go before the pandemic, hence plans to shift its model towards off-premises formats. As the WSJ said, Starbucks “expects that portion to grow as the pandemic changes commutes and routines.”

The company is focusing on New York City, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and other “dense urban areas” for the shift to pickup-only locations. 

Starbucks is also probably leading what will be a widespread trend in the restaurant industry. Dining rooms may be reopening, but they’re doing so at reduced capacity, and many consumers are still wary about actually sitting down in a restaurant. As well, a study released this week by Washington State University’s Carson College of Business found that a number of consumers won’t go out to eat until there are improvements in testing and tracing COVID-19 cases. Others are skipping the dine-in experience until a vaccine is found.

All those factors make to-go ordering a more important strategy than ever for many restaurants. Yes, the jury is still out on how much off-premises orders can make up in lost sales. And no, not every restaurant has the money and resources to completely re-outfit their stores to be more to-go friendly. But Starbucks helped create the coffeeshop culture that, up until a few months ago, was as commonplace as the grocery store. Now it’s leading the rest of us towards a to-go culture that will soon be as much a part of daily life as its cafes once were.

Starbucks Speeds Up Its Plans to Make Stores More To-Go Centric

As if it weren’t to-go-friendly enough, coffee behemoth Starbucks announced this week it is speeding up the reformatting of many of its stores to cater to more off-premises orders. Yes, the move is in response to the impact COVID-19 has had on the restaurant industry. It’s also part of Starbucks’ ongoing “Bridge to the Future” reopening plan, which CEO Kevin Johnson outlined in a letter yesterday.

A huge part of that plan is to accelerate the pace of development for what Starbucks calls its “third place” — that is, stores that cater heavily to on-the-go customers and off-premises orders. That includes drive-thru locations, Starbucks Pickup stores, and more recent formats, such as curbside pickup.

Starbucks, which claims 80 percent of its orders before the pandemic were already “on the go,” had already been moving in this direction. But as Johnson suggested in his letter this week, the pandemic has changed consumer behaviors and habits and made many folks more amenable to off-premises formats and less excited about sitting down in brick-and-mortar locations. In keeping with that, Starbucks’ plans to transition its store formats “over a three- to five-year period will now occur over the next 12 to 18 months.”

That will include building out more drive-thrus, creating more pickup locations in dense urban areas, and relocating low-performing stores (e.g., those in malls) to locations where they can have a drive thru. Johnson added in his letter that customers will “soon see more curbside pickup options as well as delivery – all formats optimized for the current crisis and a future of changing consumer expectations for the third place across the U.S.”

This emphasis on the so-called third space isn’t unique to Starbucks, although no other restaurant chain out there is pursuing it quite as aggressively. Probably because few restaurant brands have as much money or reach as Starbucks, who said this week it has now regained roughly 60 to 65 percent of prior year comparable U.S. store sales, according to Johnson.

Other brands may be able to incorporate some of these “third place” initiatives into their own operations. Buffalo Wild Wings just launched its first to-go-only concept store in Atlanta, GA, while Shake Shack unveiled its own off-premises concept earlier this month.

More interesting, though, are what smaller chains are up to. For instance, Austin, TX-based chain Torchy’s Tacos has been retrofitting existing drive-thru windows at its stores and creating on-the-fly curbside pickup at other locations. When we spoke back in April, the brand’s Chief Marketing Officer, Scott Hudler, said the company had “MacGyver’d” a bunch of technologies together to run these off-premises operations smoothly. So far it seems to be working. 

Few will be able to accomplish a total overhaul of their store formats a la Starbucks. But plucking one or two elements for the coffee giant’s playbook, at least when it comes to making to-go orders more efficient, could make all the difference as the entire restaurant industry moves closer to that third place.

ConverseNow Raises $3.25M for Its AI-Driven Restaurant Ordering Platform

Restaurant tech startup ConverseNow announced this week it had raised a $3.25 million seed funding round for its platform that uses AI to automate the process of ordering food. The round was led by Bala Investments with participation from LiveOak Venture Partners, Tensility Venture Partners, Knoll Ventures, 2048 Ventures, Bridge Investments, and Delphi Display Systems’ CEO Ken Neeld. It brings ConverseNow’s total funding to date to $3.3 million. 

ConverseNow’s CEO Vinay Shukla says part of the Austin, TX-based company’s new funds will go towards improving the AI that powers its platform. 

That AI allows restaurants to automate and personalize the ordering process for customers. Restaurants can integrate it across multiple sales channels (drive-thru, mobile app, etc.) to increase things like order accuracy and make better personalized recommendations based on a customer’s order history and other data. The platform integrates with restaurant POS systems as well as back-of-house kitchen displays.

AI is a hot topic when it comes to speeding up service and improving order accuracy in the restaurant. McDonald’s put the conversation squarely in the spotlight last year when it acquired Dynamic Yield and installed the company’s AI tech in its drive-thrus. Starbucks has in the past claimed AI is “a very important part” of its overall strategy. And a survey from the end of 2019 found that 71 percent of customers are “amenable” to having more AI in their restaurant experience.

If the same survey were given now, that figure would probably be higher. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced most restaurants to pivot to off-premises orders, and even as dining rooms slowly reopen, states’ guidelines recommend keeping to-go meals a priority. That in turn will mean more people going to the drive-thru and ordering via off-premises channels such as websites, mobile apps, and even the good old-fashioned telephone.

The other plus of AI right now is its ability to increase contactless ordering and payments. In the restaurant tech stack, it’s the tools that can offer more seamless ways to provide these things that will provide the most value.  

ConverseNow said in the press release that its tech is already being used by “leading QSRs.” In addition to improving its AI platform, the company will also use the new funds to improve customer acquisition. 

Tim Horton’s Secures Investment to Expand Its Tech-Centric Coffee Model in China

Canadian coffee chain Tim Horton’s has secured an undisclosed amount of funding from Chinese tech company Tencent, according to AgFunder News. The company originally announced the news via a post on Weibo.

Tim Horton’s China unit will use the new funds to build up its digital assets and infrastructure as well as expand its number of locations in the Chinese market. Currently, it operates about 50 stores in that country and says the investment from Tencent will let the company hit its target number of 1,500 stores sooner than originally planned, though a specific time wasn’t named. 

Tim Horton’s first entered the Chinese coffee market in February of 2019. 

Digitizing the coffee market in China is a big business right now. Tim Horton’s faces competition from Luckin, which has always pursued a digital-first model that emphasizes mobile ordering, AI-powered self-service coffee terminals, and delivery. (Side note: Luckin is currently at the center of an accounting scandal that is raising questions about future growth.)

Starbucks is also a major competitor in China, having partnered with Alibaba’s food delivery platform Ele.me to grow its delivery footprint. Starbucks has also partnered with Alibaba’s Heme supermarkets to operate its own ghost kitchens, and launched its very first to-go-centric Express store in Beijing last year. 

Tim Horton’s new investment funds come at a time when all these companies will need to double down on their tech investments to make the coffee experience as to-go-centric as possible. The COVID-19 pandemic has placed things like contactless payment, delivery, and mobile orders into the center of future restaurant operations. Major chains that want to keep growing will need to spend more on these technologies in order to meet consumer demand for both convenience and safety, not only in China but in the rest of the world, too.

Starbucks Leans on Digital Orders and Modified Formats to Reopen 90% of Stores by June

Starbucks plans to reopen 90 percent of its U.S. stores by early June, the company said this week on its Q1 2020 earnings call. As expected, stores won’t immediately reopen nationwide and with the same sit-down cafe format in which they operated before the pandemic. Instead, the Seattle-based coffee giant will open gradually, with modified service that emphasizes pickup, delivery, and drive-thru. 

The company hinted at these plans a little less than two weeks ago, when company CEO Kevin Johnson sent a letter to employees explaining the chain’s recovery plan. As I wrote at the time, Starubucks is an international chain that is already navigating this recovery process in China, so it has some experience other U.S.-based chains may not. It is also ahead of the curve — a major leader, actually — in both off-premises formats and digital business. 

On this week’s call, Johnson spotlighted both of those things. He noted that “continued recovery in China strengthens our belief that these impacts [from COVID-19] are temporary” and that Starbucks expects to emerge with an even stronger business. “We are well positioned to leverage our digital assets and new operating formats like contactless pickup and curbside to expand service to customers,” he said.   

Only 30 stores will reopen their cafes, Starbucks COO Rosalind Brewer said during the call, and there will be no seating in those locations. “We will amplify delivery, we will have the Mobile Order & Pay channels open and then the addition of a new concept, the Entryway Handoff,” she said. Starbucks will monitor what happens in these stores before making the move to reopen other locations. 

For Starubucks, this slow reopening is less detrimental than it might be for a chain with a less robust off-premises strategy. Johnson noted on the call that 80 percent of customer occasions in U.S. stores were to-go before the pandemic even hit. “And so by augmenting the in-store experience with mobile ordering and contactless pickup, we can service significant volume of customers without having the cafe seating area actually opened,” he said. 

As states slowly begin to reopen their economies, bigger chains with similar store formats to Starbucks and existing digital strategies in place will likely operate with their own versions of this modified, to-go-centric format. Chipotle, which was already testing off-premises store formats pre-pandemic, has reported strong digital sales for the quarter. With more earnings calls set to happen over the next few days, we’ll get more intel into what other chains, such as McDonald’s, have in the works.

Smaller restaurants that can’t afford expensive mobile-order systems or accommodate drive-thru lanes can still look to some tech to help with the transition towards this new normal. While most independent businesses are more concerned with keeping the lights on right now, contactless customer service and digital payments will be two areas more restaurants will look to expand to in the coming months. 

Beyond Meat Debuts in China With Starbucks Partnership

Starbucks will add Beyond Meat products to its menus in China this week, marking the alt-meat company’s first foray into that country, according to AgFunder News. The partnership comes on the heels of a similar one Starbucks and Beyond debuted in Canada earlier this year.

For the China partnership, the coffee chain will add three dishes containing Beyond products: a lasagna, a Vietnamese-style noodle salad, and pesto pasta. Starbucks will simultaneously also add two new dishes to the menu using Hong Kong’s plant-based Omnipork product.

The push into China is part of Beyond’s overall growth plans that the company outlined at the end of February, including expanding manufacturing to Asia. At the time, Beyond CEO Ethan Brown said his company will “continue to focus on Asia with the goal of producing in the region before the end of 2020.”

The COVID-19 pandemic doesn’t appear to have stalled those plans. In fact, Brown flatly stated back in February that the spread of the novel coronavirus would not prevent Beyond from entering China in 2020. “It adjusts some of our plans, but I am not taking my foot off the gas,” he said.

China is the ultimate market to tackle as far as most alternative meat companies are concerned. It has the world’s largest population and is one of the world’s largest meat producers. And Beyond isn’t alone in its plans for expansion in that country. Chief competitor Impossible Foods also plans to expand into that market.

Starbucks, meanwhile, set a preliminary goal at the beginning of the year to become resource positive by 2030 when it comes to carbon, water, and waste. Offering more alternative meat products is part of that, as traditional livestock farming is an extremely resource-intensive endeavor.

Starbucks has over 4,300 stores in China. Most of those closed when the country went on lockdown to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus. The Seattle-based chain has reopened 95 percent of its locations.

Curbside Bots and Contactless Everything: What the Post-Pandemic Restaurant Will Look Like

Even an introverted work-from-home veteran like me is starting to get kind of daffy during this here quarantine. But I will say that being stuck at home has given me a lot of time to think (and write) about the state of the restaurant industry, and I catch myself imagining what eating out will be like once we’re past this pandemic. So when Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson posted a letter this week to employees about the chain’s future, it caught my attention.

In his letter, Johnson more or less said the chain is planning to reopen some of its locations and outlined a plan for doing so. To be clear: Johnson uses the words “open” and “reopen” several times in the text, but at no point promised that your local Starbucks will reopen overnight with the usual setup and operations that existed before the pandemic. 

Which is why I’m singling out Starbucks in the first place. As an international chain that has already dealt with this recovery process overseas, and as a leader in digital business and operations, Starbucks’ plans for reopening stores give us a good hint of what we can expect restaurants to look like once the process of opening the economy begins.

Pulling from Johnson’s letter as well as numerous statements and activities from other restaurants, tech companies, and governments, we put together some predictions for what the post-pandemic restaurant experience might entail.

Note that most of these predictions are around operations and the customer experience. There are a host of other issues, from labor to food waste, I’ll be unpacking those over the next few weeks, so stay tuned.

More space, fewer tables. This is less prediction and more fact, with public figures like California Governor Gavin Newsom saying restaurants will have more space between tables and fewer seats, to ensure social distancing when eating out. Separately, the WSJ noted that restaurant chains may operate at half capacity going forward, and include things like plexiglass shields between booths. That could also spell the end of buffet-style dining and family-style seating. Golden Corral, that bastion of all buffet restaurants, has closed all units for the time being. Even before state-mandated shutdowns, other businesses were nixing community seating. And grocery stores are closing down hot bars.

Lots more mobile payments. Some restaurants are already pushing customers to use their mobile apps to order and pay for food, eliminating the need to touch a kiosk or swipe a credit card. Granted, you have to have a well-designed, easy-to-use app in order to do this, which means we’ll see a surge in smaller restaurant chains developing and/or improving their own mobile experiences for customers, whether in-house or through a third-party service. I expect we’ll also see an uptick in mobile-only locations (though it’ll vary based on state laws around cashless businesses).

Curbside delivery for all. Curbside pickup was once the territory of Sonic and the odd McDonald’s location. With dining rooms shuttered these last few weeks, restaurants have had to find other ways of bringing food out. And since not all of them have been equipped with drive-thru, curbside pickup has become the default option for many. This is one of the methods Starbucks has put into practice over the last few weeks, in some cases even taking it a step further to offer “entryway pickup” for locations without parking lots.

Contactless everything. “Contactless delivery” barely existed as a phrase before China implemented it during the peak of its fight against the novel coronavirus. Now, everyone from Instacart to Pizza Hut offers it, and I doubt we’ll revert back to the old way of handing goods off between courier and customer. For contactless to live up to its name, though, brands need to think about the technical logistics behind the operation. Restaurants’ online order systems need to have the option built right into the checkout process. They should consider providing additional features, such as push notifications to alert customers when and where their order is ready. Contactless will stick around permanently for delivery and curbside orders and, when companies figure out how, probably for in-store purchases, too.

More drive-thru lanes. Austin, TX-based chain Torchy’s Tacos explained to me recently that once the chain was forced to shut down dining rooms, it quickly opened drive-thru windows in locations that had always had the feature but had never utilized it. Many restaurants set up shop in locations that were once a Wendy’s or other fast-food chain. If they haven’t already, they could utilize that space to start offering drive-thru on the regular to customers.   

Gloves and face masks for workers. Restaurants I’ve spoken with over the last couple weeks are quick to emphasize the steps they are taking to protect both customers and workers when it comes to health. Gloves and face masks nearly always come up in that conversation. They’re also part of Gov. Newsom’s plan for restaurants, and will definitely make their way into other states’ frameworks for reopening business.

Robot staff.  Having said that, though, some might just opt for robots when it comes to who’s going to handle your food. My colleague Chris Albrecht recently pointed out that dining customers might prefer “the cold sterility of a robot” to a server wearing a face mask and gloves. Robots, of course, bring up the whole loss of human jobs angle. However, as Chris notes, with fears around the virus and human-to-human contact unlikely to subside for some time, for those restaurants that can afford it, robots might be an appetizing option, at least where city laws permit. Somehow I think they would come in especially handy for running curbside orders to cars.

Okay, wait a minute. Does all this mean my future restaurant experience will involve ordering food ahead of time via an app, then waiting at a plexiglass-encased table for a wheeled bot to roll up with my burger? That sounds lonelier than a month in quarantine.

I doubt it comes to that scenario, though. The COVID-19 situation changes daily, which mean so do expectations about what restaurants will look like when the economy reopens. Maybe all of these predictions will come true. Possibly none of them will. The most likely scenario is that a few of them, like curbside pickup and mobile payments, will become industry standards, and restaurants will use a mixture of the others based on time, money, and customer volume. As states begin discussions around reopening the economy and more chains like Starbucks start outlining their plans, we’ll get a clearer picture of what to expect in the the post-pandemic restaurant experience.

Thanks to Tech, Restaurant Employees Are Accessing Earnings Faster

One area that’s part of any good discussion about the future of the restaurant concerns employees — that is, the servers, baristas, drivers, managers, and others who make up the backbone of the industry.

How they get paid is something that’s fast changing as the industry grapples with dining room closures, mass layoffs, furloughs, and general economic tension. This week, we wrote about Domino’s teaming up with challenger bank Branch to offer employees instant access to their earnings via the Branch app.

Branch is one of a few apps out there that lets hourly workers — who often live paycheck to paycheck — get faster access to much-needed cashflow. DailyPay, which we’ve written about before, is another popular one.

I see an uptick in restaurants making it possible for employees to use these types of apps in future. As everything in the previous section of this newsletter suggests, the restaurant model is rapidly changing, and it’s hard to guess now which formats are most likely to be around next week, next month, or even next year. That means it’s also hard to predict how many people a restaurant will need on staff, and how many hours those individuals can work.

With so many questions up in the air, the least restaurants can do is integrate with one of these apps to get their employees paid faster.

McDonald’s Slows Development on Its Tech-Forward Store Remodels

In an effort to reduce capital expenditures by $1 billion, McDonald’s is slowing the development of its Experience of the Future store remodels across the U.S., according to a press statement the company sent out today. 

The move comes in the wake of the mega-chain, not to mention the entire restaurant industry, having to adjust both operations and expectations to serve customers during a global health crisis. Restaurant sales are down 80 percent, and many establishments are having to quickly pivot to delivery and takeout models in order to stay in business. 

Unlike smaller restaurants with shallower pockets, McDonald’s isn’t a newcomer to the off-premises world or the technology that powers it. Up to now, the company was running a $4 billion digital business driven largely by delivery orders. Acquisitions in 2019 of Dynamic Yield (AI tech) and Apprente (voice tech) further enhanced the chain’s to-go-friendly business model, and Experience of the Future stores are meant to encompass all these elements under one roof. They also feature self-service kiosks, curbside pickup areas, improved drive-thru lanes, and many other things meant to make the customer experience at McDonald’s as speedy and efficient as possible.

Then came COVID-19. In addition to closing dining rooms across the U.S., McDonald’s has also halted operations entirely at many stores, including 50 in the U.S., and every single one in the United Kingdom. Those shutdowns also include drive-thru and delivery.

“We entered 2020 in a strong position, but of course the world has since changed,” CEO Chris Kempczinski told Nation’s Restaurant News. “While our January and February global comparable sales were strong, changes in consumer behavior and the various restrictions in place by governments around the world have led to a significant decline in sales.” 

To that end, McDonald’s says it plans to build fewer Experience of the Future stores, whether new locations or remodels of old ones, worldwide.  

Whether this is a sign of things to come from other similar chains depends. One of the major factors of Mickey D’s remodels is how costly they are — over $700,000 per store, in some cases. Not every chain’s digital business reinvention requires an architectural overhaul as well, especially if a brand is more interested in improving things like delivery and loyalty programs. That said, we may see fewer Chipotlanes and Starbucks Express Stores rolling out for the rest of 2020 — and possibly beyond.

McDonald’s Shuts Down U.K. Restaurants

By the end of the day today, McDonald’s will close all 1,270 of its restaurants in the U.K. in response to COVID-19 concerns. That includes takeout and drive-thru options as well as delivery.

McDonald’s sent the following tweet over the weekend:

McDonald’s franchisees in the UK are expected to follow those moves and close as well. Employees of corporate-owned stores will receive full pay for their hours scheduled through April 5.

Previously, McDonald’s had closed its dining rooms but remained open to fulfill off-premises orders around the world. Today, however, McDonald’s U.K. head Paul Pomroy told the BBC, “Over the last 24 hours, it has become clear that maintaining safe social distancing whilst operating busy takeaway and Drive Thru restaurants is increasingly difficult and therefore we have taken the decision to close every restaurant in the UK and Ireland by 7pm on Monday 23 March.” 

The chain also fully closed 50 locations in the U.S. on Friday, though those stores were part of larger buildings affected by COVID-19, not standalone locations. Still, the sweeping closures in the U.K. could be an indicator of what’s to come Stateside, particularly where takeout is concerned. Over the weekend, Starbucks ended takeout service from its U.S. stores because of the “high traffic” locations were experiencing. The Seattle-based coffee chain was one of the first to close its dining rooms and switch to a to-go model last week, with McDonald’s and others following shortly thereafter. Which could mean McDonald’s is well on its way to axing its own takeaway services in the U.S.

It seems doubtful McDonald’s would get rid of drive-thru or delivery right now in the U.S., given how important those two channels are to overall sales growth. But with news of the coronavirus changing not just every day but every hour and more states taking stricter measures to limit human to human contact, nothing is a given. This is far from the last time McDonald’s, Starbucks, and other QSRs will have to quickly shift strategy in the age of coronavirus.  

Starbucks in Coronavirus-Stricken Washington State Removing Tables and Chairs in Move Towards Take & Go Format

Here in Washington state, we’ve already seen restaurants pivot to new business models to deal with the fall out of COVID-19. And now, some select Starbucks have started to remove tables and chairs for customers and transition to a take-and-go format.

You can see what this looks like at the Starbucks in my own small town of Edmonds on the outskirts of Seattle:

In addition to removing the tables and chairs (or, more accurately, pushing them all into a corner), this Starbucks location has also removed the creamer station and workers are offering to add these to customer orders. Napkins have also been removed.

While Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson had hinted earlier this week they might move towards pick-up only formats, this is the first time that I’ve seen or heard of it in action.

As I wrote yesterday, traffic to restaurants in Washington and other states has tanked by up to 50%. Judging by the relatively crowd in this normally crowded Starbucks, the dropoff has been similar.

Update: A few hours after this post, Starbucks announced that it was going to a nationwide “to-go” model for at least two weeks.

Week in Restaurants: How Restaurants Are Responding to Coronavirus

Restaurants large and small face a major sales slump due to declining foot traffic and mandates from city governments to reduce capacity in the dining room. Meanwhile, larger chains are under pressure to provide more paid sick leave to their workers, and based on the number of businesses now focusing on to-go and delivery formats, we’re about to see a massive surge in delivery orders. Here’s what the week in restaurants and restaurant tech looked like in the wake of a pandemic.

Starbucks Considers Switching to Delivery, Takeout Format

Starbucks already temporarily suspended its reusable cup program last week. Then yesterday, in a letter to customers, company CEO Kevin Johnson wrote that the chain is considering an off-premises-only model for some stores for the time being. That would mean customers could only order via the Starbucks mobile app, and all orders would have to be for pickup, delivery, or drive-thru. Johnson said closing entire stores outright would be a last resort, and that any changes made to store formats would be decided on a “community-by-community and store-by-store” basis.

NYC Restaurants Must Reduce Capacity

New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday that New York City bars and restaurants must reduce capacity by 50 percent starting today at 5 p.m. Gatherings for 500 people or more have been completely banned. De Blasio said small businesses affected by this change have the option of no-interest loans to consider, and those who face eviction should check the city’s website for free legal assistance.

 

Restaurants Add Paid Sick Leave for Workers

Darden, the parent company of Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse, and Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen launched a new sick leave policy this week where employees earn one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked. The new policy applies to about 180,000 restaurant workers across Darden’s portfolio. A Darden spokesperson mentioned that this is a permanent change that has actually been in the works for some time. “We did accelerate the rollout given the current environment,” he added.

McDonald’s announced paid sick leave for up to two weeks for employees that are asked to quarantine themselves due to coronavirus. The policy applies to corporate-owned stores only. Workers are currently demanding paid sick leave for all employees across both corporate and franchise locations.

Noodles & Company is also now offering emergency pay for quarantined workers at company-owned stores. The plan is similar to McDonald’s, where hourly workers who normally do not get paid sick time will receive paid time off if they are unable to work after being diagnosed with or quarantined because of COVID019. The company is said to be working on a longer-term paid sick leave policy for employees. 

Starbucks, in addition to its moves above, is also now offering catastrophe pay to workers who have been diagnosed with or exposed to COVID-19, as well as anyone who “comes into close prolonged contact with someone in their store or household” who has the virus, according to a letter from company president Rossann Williams. These groups are eligible for up to 14 days of catastrophe pay. Additional pay replacement “may be made up to 26 weeks” if an employee is still unable to return to work.