Changing the menu
As someone who loved spreading their wings far and wide, being told to stay put and stay away was quite challenging.
Looking back now though, i've noticed several positives; friendships blossoming with my neighbors, greater emphasis on securing local produce within my community, and the need to be more apt at living away from the center of the action.
This last point has me concerned, however. Having sat there listening to my two boys lecture me on the intricacies of the hospitality industry over the years (after thinking it was a good idea to instill some financial fight or flight at an early age), i've grown to understand the sectors wide ranging value it creates across our communities. Yet this pandemic may have accelerated an uneasy transformation in the industry, one that was idling waiting under the surface.
When I was growing up we were lucky if the solo Chinese restaurant in Sturt Street Ballarat was open past 8 on a Tuesday night.
Pre-COVID, I was an enthusiastic participant in Melbourne’s eating culture, Italian for lunch and Ethiopian for dinner (on the same street) and so on.. This boom in food and dining has been part of our social fabric. But it appears it has not been sustainable. All those new must-eat venues, hidden bars, and fancy ice cream parlors operate on razor thin margins, in an industry that appears to have something new and tempting each week. Marketing has never been more important for these establishments. Having your name in one of those online review books can lead to huge numbers through the door, but just as quick as they come, they go.
As we emerge from lockdown, I am not so sure the industry will quite look the way it did pre-crisis. Any businessman/woman will tell you an industry with overcapacity and thin margins is not built for a demand shock, let alone one of this scale. One thing i am certain of however is that what will come out of this will be fun and exciting regardless. We may loose a few to the crisis, but the men and women in the sector are some of the most creative and entrepreneurial people out in our communities. Maybe we will see hyper-local outfits take off, accelerating a trend that had been building over the last few years in our fresh produce areas. Or maybe it could be a whole new take on the restaurant, who knows? To quote Janan Ganesh from the Financial Times "we will look back on the pre-virus years as the unrecoverable belle époque of the restaurant...being able to eat like a Basque, a Laotian, an Israeli, all in one day, and often within one postcode, might come to seem as improbable as the passport-free travel of the era before the first world war does now."