The Independent Restaurant Industry Will Never Look the Same

“I don’t think we’re basing our decision to open the dining room on the government mandate. Obviously that’s the greenlight to do it, but we’re not going to just hit the gas pedal right away. We’re going to try to take a look at the broader picture of things. Being in [Florida], there’s a big push to reopen the economy, but maybe that’s not the smartest thing to safeguard our employees and their health,” Meyer says. “And it’s a business decision. We can’t turn a profit with seven seats.”

Size may be to Boia De’s detriment for dine-in service, but it has been an asset in terms of maneuverability. The restaurant, which just marked its first anniversary in June, metamorphosed over the course of two days into an exclusively off-premises operation—no analytics reports to run, no hoops to jump through, Meyer says.

Boia De’s medley of high-end Italian dishes was distilled and tweaked to not only simplify back-of-house prep, but to also offer options that would travel well. So while items like the beef tartare (hanger steak, tonnato, shallot-garlic crumble) were ferried over to the takeout menu, others like the tortellini in brodo with duck consomme and foie were omitted.

Meyer and Giangrandi also added new items, plus one throwback hit, namely La Pollita Fried Chicken. Prior to opening Boia De, the duo had already made a splash in the Miami dining scene slinging chef-prepared tacos and fried chicken from their food truck, La Pollita. They also had experience with all-day menus through a consulting project for a hotel.

“I think that background was really helpful. … We had some recipes and some ideas already that we knew were successful,” Giangrandi says.

Ingredient prices have also played a part in carryout menus. In San Francisco, the longstanding Pier 23 Cafe Restaurant & Bar typically serves a wide array of seafood, from raw oysters and ceviche to clam chowder and grilled octopus, in a scenic spot overlooking the bay. The restaurant employed dedicated takeout windows to adapt to dine-in bans and streamlined its menu not just to fit carryout, but to also make the business more cost-effective.

“We’ve been forced to limit our menu, and due to erratic price changes in produce, meat, and fish it’s hard to determine what will make sense for our future menu. Of course, we’ve maintained our faves like Fish & Chips, fish tacos, Crab & Shrimp Louie Salad, and they’ve done well as takeout items,” says marketing manager Lei Levi. “Overall, what this crisis has taught all small businesses is you have to be nimble, informed, … and open to change if you want to survive.”

Restaurant plus

While the pandemic forced all restaurants—independent and chain—to adopt many facets of the quick-service model (streamlined menus, portable dishes, quicker throughput, etc.), some changes went beyond the boundaries of foodservice altogether. For instance, many operators have expanded their offerings to include fresh produce, nonperishable goods, and other sundries that were historically in the grocery realm. Restaurants that already did retail, or at least had the foundation for it, found it to be a lifeline when their dining rooms closed and menus tightened.

In Nunnelley, Tennessee, Pinewood Kitchen & Mercantile adapted to the dine-in bans by leaning into its roots. The property, which dates back to the 1920s, was originally a general store. When Mee McCormick and her husband Lee took over in 2015, they transformed it to include a restaurant and biodynamic farm, but the couple never abandoned the mercantile side.

“When COVID-19 first hit, we thought, ‘Oh man, we are going to close.’ Our destination restaurant is located an hour away from Nashville. I was terrified; my entire community is dependent on us as we are the farm, the mercantile, and the restaurant,” McCormick says. “We immediately shifted into pickup and delivery—something fairly new to us. We put together farm boxes, which include all of our fresh produce and meat from the farm, farm-fresh eggs, as well as cooked meals, cakes, our canned jams, sauces, microbiome soups, homemade breads, and biscuits.”

Back in Seattle, Jordan has also taken a similar approach. Although JuneBaby is the only restaurant serving to-go dishes, it has also become a hub of sorts for the sister concepts, selling specialty goods like Lucinda’s Granola and a Salare Charcuterie Basket.

While the coronavirus has led many restaurateurs to improvise a retail arm, it also validated operators who had already done so. Larder, a delicatessen, bakery, and gourmet market in Cleveland, Ohio, may have racked up a collection of James Beard Award nominations (for Best New Restaurant in 2019 and Best Chef: Great Lakes this year), but it is a far cry from the traditional semifinalists. For one, it’s not even a full-service restaurant. The three chefs/co-owners, Jeremy Umansky, Allie La Valle-Umansky, and Kenny Scott, cut their teeth in fine-dining restaurants across the U.S. and in Europe. But when the trio decided to open their own establishment in Umansky’s hometown, they gravitated to something quite different.

“Aside from the personal drive and the romance of what we feel our concept is, part of the reason we decided to go this route was that we thought … that for independent operators, this was going to be a model of service that could be intensively profitable compared to existing models,” Umansky says.

Ironically enough, Larder still grapples with an issue shared by other independents: adapting the menu to go. Even without the full-service format, Larder’s seasonally driven sandwiches, salads, and boards were meant to be enjoyed on-site.

“One of the things we’ve had to rework recently—which we weren’t really even thinking about initially—was that now that everything is to go, not all food travels well,” Umansky says. “If we wanted to maintain a specific quality standard and level of enjoyment that people get out of eating our food and the level of deliciousness that our food has, we had to tweak a few things for a 20-minute car ride.”

Quality control and logistics are tangible factors that can, to a degree, be optimized and controlled. But one pervasive and very powerful force beyond any restaurateur’s control is the culture shift. Americans have been migrating toward convenience and efficiency for years, especially compared to some countries where eating out is enshrined for its social value, not its ease. In addition to a larger off-premises market, the U.S. also has a sizable share of chains whereas independents remain the lifeblood of many international markets.

Spanish concept Teleferic Barcelona has an intimate understanding of the widening gap between the restaurant scenes of the U.S. and Europe. The restaurant, which specializes in tapas and pintxos (snacks popular in Northern Spain) first opened in Sant Cugat, just outside Barcelona, in 1993 and later expanded to a second location in the city center.

Now with a pair of outposts in the Bay Area, Teleferic Barcelona could soon outgrow its indie identity and graduate into an emerging chain. But for now the family-owned business has a unique vantage point, observing the impact of the coronavirus on its locations in two different countries.

“In Spain, the restaurant culture is based more on socializing. People there may order a pizza once a week for a break from cooking, but takeout is not as popular because Spaniards cook at home a lot and enjoy it. Also, the amount of family-owned restaurants and bars in Spain is much larger than in the United States, and they typically have fewer resources and no experience with to-go,” says executive chef Oscar Cabezas.

Since shared plates don’t translate well to off-premises, the two California stores have doubled down on their paella, taking pains to ensure the quality isn’t diminished by the journey from restaurant to home. The pandemic spurred Teleferic Barcelona to grow its to-go arm in record time, and, Cabezas says, could lead to a permanent change in operations, if not its service-oriented spirit.

The new normal?

Across the globe, people are caught in between adapting to the new normal and trying to return to life pre-COVID-19. It’s the same for organized groups, governments, and companies of all sizes and stripes. Within foodservice, many operators are focusing on specific, incremental changes.

Boia De’s Giangrandi and Meyer are eager to get back to business as usual as much as the post-pandemic world will allow. Nevertheless, they recognize that consumers may be reluctant to forfeit some of the changes brought about by the dine-in bans. For one, the restaurant hadn’t previously offered off-premises options. During the dine-in bans, they were able to capture new business from locals who’d wanted to visit the restaurant but couldn’t score a reservation. While the owners are all too happy to welcome new guests, they admit that carryout was never part of the plan for Boia De.

“There’s the romantic idea of opening and running a restaurant, being chefs and whatnot. There’s also the business side, and those two need to coexist. … We were in a fortunate position where we were able to fill our restaurant and be financially successful, while still maintaining our integrity or our ideals of what the experience should be. Now we’re just trying to get through it,” Meyer says. “It’s going to be a really different world at the end of this all, but hopefully we can get back to that place.”

Lunch may be the right compromise; it would appease patrons seeking takeout options without overwhelming Boia De’s small kitchen during a bustling dinner daypart. Rather than the time-intensive dishes of the standard menu, lunch would be a handful of salads and sandwiches, including the muffuletta, which has proved a carryout favorite. The lower price point would also be a strong selling point for cash-strapped consumers.

In terms of adding a new dimension to the business, Pinewood Kitchen & Mercantile is already well on its way. Even though Tennessee’s loosening restrictions allowed the restaurant to open up outdoor picnic seating in May, the team has remained invested in growing its consumer-packaged goods business. Not only has the success of its fledgling off-premises program allowed McCormick to add more employee shifts, it’s also leading Pinewood Kitchen to reach customers beyond Nunnelley and even Nashville.

“We plan on continuing our farm box delivery and expanding our canning business to a national level in the coming weeks with distribution of our gut-healthy soups, jams, and sauces,” she says. But while Pinewood Kitchen’s reach may grow, McCormick knows, like all independent restaurateurs, that the core of the business remains much closer to home. “It’s important that we know each other and that our level of hospitality be personal. When times get hard, these are the relationships that weather the storms,” she adds.

For other indies, the lessons of the pandemic have not spawned a new business element but rather precipitated deep reflection on not just their own business but the industry writ large.

Amid dine-in bans, Larder shrunk from eight employees down to the three cofounders. In May the restaurant was able to bring back its two full-time employees, but it’s unlikely to grow beyond that in the immediate future. Umansky hopes the business will one day get back to where it was, but as he points out, there are far too many what-ifs to even make a guess of when that may transpire. Instead he wagers that market contraction could ultimately be to the detriment of larger brands, not the independents. Ultra-fine dining will survive since, as he puts it, “capitalism rules the world,” but when it comes down to a $20 dinner at a chain or an independent, he thinks consumers will gravitate toward the latter.

“There’s so much gray with all this,” Umansky says. “I don’t necessarily know if this conversation boils down to what’s right and what’s wrong. I think it’s going to be a matter of what works and what’s sustainable and what’s best for individual communities.”

Communities—often those found in larger, more diverse cities—might be more likely to hold tight to their locally owned, one-of-a-kind restaurants. Although Jordan predicts the restaurant industry will lose a lot of independents as a result of the coronavirus, he also champions Seattle as a more evolved, inclusive city, one that is attuned to and supportive of its neighbors, including small business owners. Similarly the crisis has brought restaurant owners together in an unprecedented way, even though the circumstances differ.

For indies, the pandemic has further compelled them to reach out to and stay in touch with one another. It’s a small silver lining, but one that restaurateurs are eagerly holding onto as they face an uncertain future—together.

“This pandemic has united a lot of communities and definitely united us as a nation of restaurant owners and employees and chefs, etc. … It sucks that this is the cause that allows us to be more connected and understand each other, but we all have become like an advisory board to each other,” Jordan says. “One day we’re happy and one day we’re going crazy and the next day we can’t figure anything out and the next day we have this vision. It’s changing all the time so it’s good to have our community, the restaurant community, there for each other and so committed to each other right now.”