Here’s what South Florida restaurants of the future will look like: Dining room tables permanently spread 6 feet apart. Disposable paper menus instead of laminated ones. Curbside delivery is here to stay. Forget about salt and pepper shakers or napkin holders on tables. Want ketchup with those hash browns? Flag down your masked and gloved server.
Restaurant owners are unsure when the new coronavirus pandemic will end, but they are sure about one thing: When COVID-19 restrictions are lifted, South Florida eateries will never look the same.
Local hospitality experts interviewed this week by the South Florida Sun Sentinel say that when the protracted shutdown is over, surviving restaurants must adapt quickly to the post-pandemic world or go out of business. Because a COVID-19 vaccine remains at least a year away, when dining rooms do re-open, customers could be skittish in a confined restaurant space. Personal hygiene and sanitation will be more crucial than ever, and business models must evolve, they say.
“Only the creative will survive,” says Tom House, a 50-year restaurant veteran who consults local eateries about staff training and food safety through his Fort Lauderdale company, A Better House.
“Restaurants must get ahead of the curve now and be proactive,” House says. “Maybe they’re doing touchless point-of-sale systems. Maybe they’re offering single-use ketchup packets instead of glass ketchup bottles on the table. People are going to be extra paranoid, so you have to give them options.”
Everyone from President Donald Trump to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are hashing out plans to re-open the economy. This week, DeSantis assembled a task force to plan for a phased re-opening of businesses. Meanwhile Trump unveiled his “Opening Up America Again” blueprint on Thursday, giving governors authority over when states can return to business.
Local restaurants are also paying attention to how China, which re-opened its economy last week, can rebound from the crisis. So far, Chinese consumers, still afraid of catching coronavirus, are holding onto their money instead of spending it in shopping malls and other retail spaces.
Which is why South Florida restaurant owners, already grappling with mass layoffs of its workers, fear customers won’t rush back into dining rooms fast enough.
“People keep saying on social media, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to dine out again,’ but I think they’re gonna be cautious for a long while,” says Eddie Watana, owner of Eddie’s Thai restaurant in Cooper City.
The affable restaurateur used to hug, kiss and fist-bump patrons before the pandemic, but now he greets them with a face mask, gloves and a namaste, often from the other side of a 6-foot table blocking the dining room. “That’s my schtick now,” he says. ‘It makes customers laugh.”
“God gave me only one gift: the gift of the gab,” Watana says. “My wife says I’m asthmatic and I had to stop hugging people, but it’s hard. I’m not going to be able to do that for a long freaking time.”
One month after his 1,600-square-foot dining room closed, Watana’s upscale Thai cuisine spot is on life support, he says. Takeout and delivery accounted for 20% of his pre-pandemic sales. Thousands of dollars in debt, Watana skipped paying April’s rent and expects he’ll be evicted by May 15, when rent is due again. “This pandemic will be the final nail in the coffin,” Watana says.
But the pandemic has taught Watana one thing: Customers crave curbside takeout and prefer the safety of social distancing. Wantana is planning to open a smaller takeout-only Thai restaurant once Eddie’s Thai closes, and he expects business to be booming.
“People are not going to stop wearing gloves and masks,” Watana says. “They don’t want to sign their receipts because they have to touch the pens. They use their shirts to open our doors. So I have to do more takeout, maybe have one-time-use paper menus. And hand sanitizer everywhere.”
‘We have to change everything.’
Elin Trousdale’s cozy Lighthouse Point restaurant Le Bistro has been to hell’s kitchen and back, after rehabilitating her 19-year-old eatery on chef Gordon Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares” a decade ago.
But nothing compares to the 30% drop in revenue since the coronavirus pandemic began. After the shutdown, Trousdale and her husband, chef/co-owner Andy Trousdale, pivoted to curbside takeout, which has been popular. What’s really helped is Le Bistro’s new side hustle: a gourmet shop offering to-go homemade breads, butchered meats, Dijon vinaigrette dressings and Bordelaise sauces.
Trousdale says she sensed a shift in customer mentality from the start. Once the shutdown started, “I put a box of tissues outside so people could use it to open the doors,” she says. “I told Andy to buy a bunch of to-go containers so we could instantly transition.”
Once dining rooms re-open, she wants to keep curbside takeout, space her tables further apart, switch to disposable paper menus, put sanitizer on every table and replace white tablecloths after every meal.
In turn, Trousdale hopes customers will obey the new Florida Department of Health posters now hanging in the dining room, which outline proper hand washing and social distancing.
“People will have fears about the virus for a long time, but the onus shouldn’t just be placed on small businesses,” Trousdale says. “People should take care to wash hands and cover their mouths when sneezing. I think people will go to places where they feel the most comfortable. People say they trust us because we’re the only two working here.”
Michael Cheng, a hospitality expert and dean of FIU’s Chaplin School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, agrees with Trousdale. For a month South Floridians have learned to be hyper-vigilant about stopping the spread of coronavirus, and those behaviors will linger until a vaccine is found.
“Maybe a miraculous vaccine will be found, and then hallelujah, back to normal, but that’s not for a year or longer,” Cheng says. “Customer expectations for proper sanitization and hygiene we’re seeing now for takeout and delivery, that’s not going away. That’s the new normal.”
That’s why House is adapting the way he’s teaching restaurant staff to interact with customers in the post-coronavirus world.
“We have to change everything,” he says. “People are going to be watching the servers, the cooks, the staff under a microscope. Maybe a customer saw a worker touch garbage before wiping their brow. Self-awareness will be 100 times higher. Managers used to check your hair and nails before shifts started, and those old-school values will come back.”
How restaurants will evolve
Restaurants are already helping offset sluggish takeout sales by selling meal kits and groceries to go during the pandemic, and these services will continue permanently, Cheng says. Eateries that once relied on food-delivery apps like UberEats for delivery will hire drivers to avoid the 30% commission fee. Restaurants will use better takeout packaging so fresh meals stay hot during delivery.
But there will be drawbacks, Cheng says. Old conveniences like tableside condiment bottles will be by-request only. The days of tables packed into restaurants like sardines are over, Cheng says. Body temperature checks at the front door could become commonplace.
“If you open up the floodgates too fast, you’re going to see another coronavirus spike, and nobody wants that,” he says.
And mobile payment systems will gain popularity, adds House, who has worked at 32 East in Delray Beach and Café Maxx in Pompano Beach. More eateries may adopt apps like Venmo, Zelle and Apple Pay to minimize interactions with staff at pickup.
Hand sanitizer on every table is the goal when his two-story food hall, Sistrunk Marketplace and Brewery, opens in Fort Lauderdale, project manager Steven Dapuzzo says. When the pandemic disrupted Sistrunk’s debut in March, Dapuzzo pivoted and turned the food hall’s soon-to-open distillery into a hand sanitizer factory. He’s also adding hand-washing stations on the ground floor.
Dapuzzo’s Society 8 Hospitality Group runs Park and Ocean and Wild Thyme Oceanside Eatery, both of which have been closed since March 17. He’s confident they can re-open — but only with dramatic changes.
“We’re creating wider gaps between tables, and no more ketchup bottles or salts and pepper shakers,” Dapuzzo says.
Patrons must feel self-assured about dining out again, and eateries share a responsibility to lure them back, he says.
“You have to reinvent your sanitation practices and bring all the safety guidelines from the kitchen to the front of the house,” Dapuzzo says. “I can’t see any other way to re-open.”
