Setting The Scene: How The Restaurant Environment Is Changing During The Covid-19 Pandemic

Like many in the business of observing and writing about food, I’ve been watching the effects of the necessary measures to fight the pandemic on the restaurant industry — an industry already famous for razor-thin margins and often precarious existences from month to month.

Although it is clear that there will be changes large and small for the immediate and ongoing future, there’s no concrete path forward at this point — nor is there likely to be for some time.

How, then, is dining out as we know it likely to change as we adapt to rules and restrictions that are changing daily? As this topic is too big for one post, I’m introducing a series on how the restaurant industry is adapting to the changed environment, consumer and world in general: from blurring the lines between the perceptions of dine in and takeout to delivery options that transform the restaurant from foodservice to retailer. Along the way, we’ll look at what this shift means to different segments of the restaurant industry, from quick service to fine dining, and other issues that restaurant owners and chefs are trying to deal with while protecting their vulnerable staff and perishable inventory.

With a nod to Danny Meyer, let’s begin by setting the table and examining the influence of the restaurant environment on the dining experience.

Part 1: The Physical Elements of a Restaurant 

Despite the controversy over The Spotted Pig and her swiftly rescinded decision to pair with restaurateur Ken Friedman, chef Gabrielle Hamilton’s influential restaurant Prune and incandescent writing are unmistakable. In a heartfelt piece for The New York Times titled “My Restaurant Was My Life for 20 Years. Does the World Need It Anymore?”, Hamilton describes the aching desolation of dreaming about being in her now-shuttered restaurant, and the casual conviviality that she had hoped to foster there. “Like most chefs who own these small restaurants that have now proliferated across the whole city, I’ve been driven by the sensory, the human, the poetic and the profane — not by money or a thirst to expand,” writes Hamilton. “Even after seven nights a week for two decades, I am still stopped in my tracks every time my bartenders snap those metal lids onto the cocktail shakers and start rattling the ice like maracas. I still close my eyes for a second, taking a deep inhale, every time the salted pistachios are set afire with raki, sending their anise scent through the dining room. I still thrill when the four-top at Table 9 are talking to one another so contentedly that they don’t notice they are the last diners, lingering in the cocoon of the wine and the few shards of dark chocolate we’ve put down with their check.”

The restaurant environment — the clatter of the dishes, murmur of other diners and subdued (or depending on the open kitchen/square footage situation, exuberant and often profanity laced) noise from the back of house — is part of the entire experience of dining out and one that is difficult to recreate in the home. In a landscape where any restaurants are shuttered due to governmental edict (although some of those regulations are currently being eased), those environments are now inaccessible to the home diner. 

Nonetheless, some brands are attempting to bring a piece of the restaurant footprint into the home, although opinions may vary as to how well they succeed. Although they are miles away from Prune’s homey hospitality, these attempts raise interesting questions about the act of dining itself.

DoorDash (a company perhaps in need of some good PR itself due to a tipping scandal last year) believes that what diners are really missing from their quick service and fast casual restaurants is…the decor, naturally. Those who miss the plastic seating of McDonald’s or the faux gilt of The Cheesecake Factory can download backgrounds to use in group chats when eating together. There’s also provided playlists to encapsulate the audial environment, should that somehow enhance the experience. Should you desire a similar experience with a side of Cheddar Bay biscuits, Red Lobster offers a date night complete with Spotify playlist loaded up with Beyoncé. Sade and other R&B classics.

To a certain extent, we’ve been moving in this direction for some time: the increased intrusion of Instagram into the process of eating out has shifted some of the joys of restaurant life to a digital world already.  If “the ‘gram eats first”, is it really such a jump to dining via Zoom?

Although these elements may seem frivolous to consider in these times, there’s a certain logic to these offerings — to remind diners about the brand behind the food, and the idea of eating in a restaurant itself, as opposed to on a living room couch. Restaurant going, much like any of our other dining behavior, is a habit formed to a certain extent through reinforcement and repetition, and as the much-needed restrictions continue, these habits are eroding and being replaced by in home dining. 

In a big chain restaurant, where familiarity and homogeneity are key to pumping out franchisees year after year, perhaps this environment can be replicated at home with a Zoom background and a corporate approved playlist in the background. For smaller restaurants, however, where the neighborhood bonhomie is a signature part of the aesthetic and not easily replicated in a digital world, these methods ring hollow (especially since these restaurants also face additional challenges in the delivery spheres — more on this topic in a later segment of this series). 

Whatever method they use, it will be key to the restaurant industry’s success to get diners back through those doors when it is safe for restrictions to lift — but what that experience will be is another matter. And all the table setting in the world can’t account for the key part of a restaurant experience: the food.


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