Wandering Barman's Portable, Single-Serve Craft Cocktails in Intriguing, Arty, Descriptive Packaging
It’s no secret restaurant and food service businesses in America have been devastated by the pandemic. In mid-September, the National Restaurant Association announced that 6 months after the onset of Covid-19, sadly nearly 1 in 6 restaurants (almost 100,000) had closed permanently; nearly 3 million employees were still out of work; and the industry was on track to lose $240 billion in sales by the end of the year.
Those who survived have combined flexibility, imagination, and good communication to create new revenue streams. Here are 11 different business models pivots that are succdeeding. Aside from shifting to more take-out and sidewalk dining, these firms developed new channels of distribution, product forms, items and sizes, audiences, geographies in which to sell, and packaging. These new lines of business are likely to endure and continue to grow post-Covid.
From Restaurant & Bar Prepared Cocktails, to Canned & Bottled Craft Alcoholic Drinks
Wandering Barman’s portable product line idea started with the founder’s all draft cocktail bar in Bushwick, Brooklyn. It evolved into a company that produces and sells all natural, high-end, single-serve, pre-made, original craft cocktails for bars and restaurants. While the line was in development prior to Covid, since March, it has been embraced by bars and restaurants that have had to shift primarily to take-out. The establishments now have a portable, high quality, take-out, craft cocktail option, and Wandering Barman has infinitely more outlets to sell to. And since many bars and restaurants have fewer employees who are kept further apart from each other, Wandering Barman’s pre-made, single-serve bottles save labor, training, workspace, and provide beverage consistency.
Their cocktails are best served over ice, and can either be pre-poured by bartenders, or guests can pour their own. The intriguing, arty labels explain each drink’s flavor profile, just as waitstaff or bartenders would, and make the act of pouring it yourself in-home, more experiential. In February, if all goes well, Wandering Barman will open their new production space with a tasting room in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It will be the very first “cocktail brewery”. Other bars around the country are bottling and canning their own signature cocktails for take-out and distribution in liquor stores. www.wanderingbarman.com
From Queens, New York, Chinatown Restaurant, to Frozen, Take-Home Chinese Dumplings
Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao, from Flushing, Queens Chinatown, considered to have among the best soup dumplings in New York, is selling frozen versions for consumers to steam at home. The frozen dumplings can be picked up at the restaurant or ordered via a food delivery service. Other Chinese and Korean restaurants are doing the same. www.nanxiangxiaolongbao.com
Their famous soup dumplings can now be purchased frozen directly from the restaurant
From Bulk Milk Supplier to Dairies, to Retail Farm Store
As a result of Coronavirus and closings of school cafeterias and restaurants, Whoa Nellie Farm in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, a 500-acre dairy farm that’s been in the same family since the 1700s, had contracts cancelled from suppliers they sold bulk raw milk to, who pasteurized and packaged it. Rather than waste the milk and have no income, they decided to buy pasteurizing equipment and sell milk directly to consumers at their farm, eliminating 2 middlemen levels: the processor/business-to-business seller, and the school or restaurant selling the finished product to consumers. Whoa Nellie posted on their Facebook page they would now be selling from the farm, and there are long lines of cars each day along the country road. In addition to their own dairy products, they also sell other local farmer’s goods including jams, honey, maple syrup, eggs, chicken and soap. It’s a fun outing for customers who like the freshness and quality, and the idea of helping independent farmers.
Long lines of cars waiting to shop at Whoa Nellie Farm Store in Pennsylvania
From Restaurant & Prepared Meals, to Farm Grown Ingredients
Dig, that operates 30 healthy, fast-casual restaurants in New York, Philadelphia and Boston and the vegetable-forward, sit-down restaurant 232 Bleecker, launched Dig Acres Farm Boxes and Crates. Larry Tse, farm program manager, explained the boxes are ordered by customers and picked up at the restaurants or are delivered to their homes. They contain products grown by Dig on land leased in upstate New York, as well as other products from farmers in the region. Dig Acres Farm Crates are sold through Fresh Direct and exclusively carry products grown by Dig. The well-received crates and boxes were offered during the late Spring, Summer & Fall growing seasons. Dig is now contemplating an expanded program for next year and looking into crops & products that can sell year-round. www.diginn.com
Farm Box available last Spring, Summer and Fall at Dig Inn restaurants and through home delivery
From Hot Bar & Deli Foodservice, to Frozen Grocery at Whole Foods
Prior to March, Global Village Foods, based in Vermont, sold it’s African inspired foods primarily in deli foodservice and hot bars, with additional snacks and a frozen food line sold through natural food co-ops and select Whole Foods Markets across New England. When the deli and hot bar sales plummeted due to Covid, they had to rethink foodservice given new concerns for consumer safety. Global Village moved their samosas to individually packaged & sealed containers for both grab-and-go deli and grocery freezer sections. They also rebranded and redesigned their frozen meal packaging for stronger shelf-impact. Based on early success, Whole Foods recently expanded the frozen meal line to more stores across New England, and going forward, expanding distribution to other outlets and geographies will be a major focus for the company. www.globalvillagecuisine.com
Line of African Inspired Frozen Foods Available At Some Whole Foods in the Northeast
From Catering to Gift Baskets & Ready-to-Heat, Home Delivered Meals
Eat Offbeat's Immigrant Chefs From Africa, The Middle East and South America
Eat Offbeat, is a Queens New York based caterer that hires immigrant chefs from countries with less familiar cuisines: Sri Lanka, Senegal, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Venezuela. Pre-Covid, the chefs prepared a range of dishes from their countries for offices, meetings, parties and special occasions. They’ve pivoted to offering curated holiday boxes, and ready-to-heat meal boxes that include 8 dishes from a variety of countries. Eat Offbeat delivers to customers homes in the New York metropolitan area. Holiday gift boxes are a collection of gourmet holiday eats and treats like pastries, jams, teas, spices, nuts and dried fruits from around the world, hand-crafted by the chefs. Gift boxes ship nationwide. www.eatoffbeat.com
Eat Offbeat's Ready to Serve Meal Boxes & Holiday Gift Boxes
From Restaurant Flavors, To Home Cooks Via E-Commerce
David Chang's Momofuku launched a line of 3 different salt/spice blends that capture signature flavors from the restaurants, and Chili Crunch, a multi-sensory, crunchy hot sauce condiment for sprinkling over anything you might use hot sauce for. They’re are a way for people to experience the restaurant from wherever they are in the country or world, and even in New York, now that Covid is limiting restaurant visits. The Savory is like salt and pepper except deeper, rounder, and more umami. Tingly has Sichuan peppercorns, is lightly numbing and has sort of a lemon-pepper flavor. Spicy has gochugaru in it which is a Korean pepper flake. It's not super spicy! The condiments are available solely on the shop.momofuku.com website.
New line of seasoning salts and condiments from Momfuku, available from shop.momofuku.com
From Bakery & Restaurant, to Fabulous Homemade & Curated Provisions
Homemade Breads, Pastries, Jams, Chocolate Sauce & Seasonings from Bourke Street Bakery, NYC
Bourke Street Bakery, the New York outpost of the wonderful Sydney, Australia bakery café, hands down offers the best provisions I’ve seen anywhere. I was enchanted by the bakery in Sydney, ate my way through their pastry and little savory pies the entire flight back to the U.S., and was thrilled to discover they’d relatively recently opened in Manhattan. While many restaurants and bakeries have pivoted to sell provisions, they’re often limited, overpriced and not that interesting. Bourke Street Bakery has done an exceptionally good job curating an extensive mix of unusual, high quality, reasonably priced provisions, many of which are homemade. They include jams in fun flavor combinations, Ultimate Aussie Ketchup, granola, seed & spice mixes to sprinkle on salads, avocado toast, and almost anything, Ultimate Chocolate Sauce, marinated sheep’s milk feta cheese in olive oil, wonderful frozen items like their signature sausage rolls, mini meat and veggie pies, sourdough short rib lasagna, seasonal items like mince pies, challah stuffing, and panettone, a nice selection of wines, and their wonderful range of interesting breads, muffins, pastries and cookies. You can shop online, or at the bakery café, where the products are laid out beautifully, and it’s so much fun to browse. www.bourkestreetbakery.com
Gingerbread Men, Homemade Jams, Aussie Ketchup & Seasonings & Sprinkles from Bourke Street Bakery ... [+]
Artisanal Baked Goods Delivery From Restaurant & Grocery, to Homes
Bread Basket NYC was formed by the team behind Featherstone Foods, a wholesale distributor of artisanal New York baked goods, to hotels, restaurants and high-end grocery stores, from Philadelphia to New Haven. For many of these bakeries, Featherstone is their largest customer. After Covid hit, industry sales declined significantly, and the Featherstone team wanted to do more to help these independent bakeries survive. Bread Basket curates unique combinations of products from New York partner bakeries, delivered free to people within a certain radius of Manhattan, and through FedEx overnight shipping outside the area. Customers can choose individual basket combinations or flexible subscriptions. Bakeries represented include Orwashers, BAKED, Amy’s Bread, Pain d’Avignon, New Yorker Bagel and Leaven & Co. Sales are going well and they anticipate adding items like jams, honey and butter, and possibly extending the concept to the West Coast. For each basket purchased, a loaf is donated to Food Bank for New York City, a part of Feeding America. www.breadbasketnyc
A basket of breads and cookies from New York artisanal bakeries delivered by Bread Basket NYC to ... [+]
From Food Service Distributors, to Home Delivery of Top Restaurant Quality Provisions
Baldor, The High-End Restaurant Ingredient Supplier Launched Home Delivery Post Covid
Baldor, for decades, distributed a huge selection of the finest quality ingredients sourced from all over the U.S and the world, to high-end restaurants from Virginia to Maine, and to gourmet food stores like Eataly and Union Market. They provided unusual meats, produce (200 different micro-greens), 1055 different cheeses, exotic spices, and other ingredients from small independent farmers and producers. Baldor and its suppliers were devastated when Coronavirus hit. Almost immediately they pivoted, for the first time in their history, to selling directly to consumers for home consumption. Initially minimum orders were $200. They have since come down to $150 in all but the densely populated New York metropolitan area, where it’s $100.
Baldor’s new Home Delivery tagline is “The Restaurant World’s Freshest Foods Are Coming Home”. Sales have been climbing since word got out to foodies, who can now easily buy unusual meats like capon, quail, goose, venison and guinea hens, rare imported produce, hard to find cheeses, a range of international doughs and pastry shells, and for the first time, wines. There are website tabs for “Peak Season” items and a “Restaurant Series” with kits from popular restaurants, where consumers finish and assemble dish components at home.
Home Delivery is a win for Baldor with lasting impact post Covid because there’s huge consumer sales potential for these items, uniquely available to home chefs for the first time. Many consumers are willing to spend a little more, since they’re not eating out or traveling as much. Cooking more at home will likely at least partially stick, since many will continue to work from home, at least part time. Home delivery is a win for Baldor’s vendors who are reaching new markets and creating future loyal customers. Many of the vendors had to develop smaller packages and quantities. Since the pivot, Baldor’s non-restaurant sales have gone from 12% of the business to 50%, and their suppliers appreciate them all the more for helping them develop new opportunities in this difficult time.
