Mouthing OffAfter home cooking and gourmet takeaway boom, will restaurants have to adapt to a new normal after the pandemic?
- As coronavirus vaccinations are rolled out and dining restrictions are relaxed again, what’s next for the restaurant industry?
- Business may resume as before, but fine-dining takeaways and home cooking may retain their popularity
Financial analysts on Bloomberg are always saying stuff like, “Challenges also bring real opportunities.”
That was certainly true for some stocks last year. While most businesses tanked, companies such as Amazon and Netflix raked in the profits. (Quick show of hands – who else happily overindulged in home shopping, home entertainment and home food delivery while stuck at home with nothing to do wait out the pandemic?)
Now that Covid-19 vaccines are rolling out, people across the world are eagerly anticipating a so-called return to “normal” – whatever that will be. It stands to reason the tectonic plates are about to shift and change the social and economic landscape again. People want to travel, go out to eat, and drunkenly French-kiss strangers in a bar.
But as we collectively emerge from pandemic isolationism, I wonder if it all will be “same as it ever was” again. Can the world simply revert to pre-2020 conditions or has that boat sailed for good? The answer is important particularly for the food and beverage industry.
The past year has been tough for restaurant owners, but I think the immediate future will be just as uncertain. Will everyone in Hong Kong start to dine out in the numbers we were once used to seeing? Or are we so used to ordering online that the industry paradigm changed for good? I don’t know this answer and I really don’t envy restaurateurs who have to hedge their bets in this futures market.
Takeaway food is no longer confined to pizza and noodles. During the lockdown, every fine-dining restaurant had to adapt and offer its own gourmet meal-to-go for sophisticated dining at home. That’s a convenience I’m not sure some folks are ready to give up. Plenty of apps have violently disrupted many industries already. There’s no reason to think the food and beverage industry will be immune to it.