The pandemic has blown the benchmarks of several sectors of the restaurateur’s economic activity and rendered its common practices obsolete, thus creating a feeling of isolation and stress. This tension is clearly present in the restaurant industry and is even felt by customers.
Posted at 9:00 a.m.
This is why it is necessary to question the activities of the restaurateur and remind customers of the importance of the stakes for the sustainability of the players in this economic sector.
What exactly has changed for the restaurateur? Nothing has been spared.
The health crisis has caused closures, changes in business processes and a shift from the role of manager to that of handyman. Since the repeated closures of restaurants due to sanitary measures, this period has been a succession of perpetual running-in and constant organizational relearning. However, without a defined framework or a robust reference model to support this approach, it is quite possible that these new practices will not reach their full potential in terms of value creation.
We say of restaurateurs that they are passionate, mobilized and creative. In fact, the reopening of restaurants is rather synonymous with fatigue, debt and forced adjustments.
The restaurateurs we studied achieve breakthroughs through three key roles1 :
Collaborater : attract customers, retain and motivate a team, collaborate with suppliers, maintain and develop its network of collaborators and customers and its activity on social networks or on other similar platforms;
Director : this role of the restorer was defined during the period studied, it is that of reviewing the ways of doing things. Prior to COVID-19, processes meant standardization. Today, experimentation characterizes processes and decision-making. There are no more one size fits all. For the older among us, remember in the mid-1970s, theater went from a known form to a form then called “collective creation”. With 50 years behind the theater, the restoration must review its model;
Controller: see to the quality and maintenance of standards, both in terms of service and operational costs, personnel, food, sanitation, equipment and rent. The profitability of each transaction took the place of volume at all costs.
And the customer in all this? It is he who benefits from this gain in flexibility.
Why go to the restaurant?
For the customer, the restaurant remains a place to have a meal, but which, in addition, in the current circumstances, reconfirms its role as an essential social space. Let us remember that the restoration, originally, was a place of welcome; it is still the case today! We may have skimmed it somewhat because of the obligatory importance given to deliveries, drive-thru orders or the many ways to virtualize the transaction.
The quality of the reception has a price and the covidian customer recognizes the heavy financial burdens of the restaurateur.
More than an art, catering is a field for entrepreneurs where generosity must be combined with profitability – of the guests, yes, but also of the customers. It is a business relationship to be consolidated for everyone’s well-being.
Today’s society, numbed by the pandemic, has not abandoned its obsession with speed: everything is going faster, our schedule, online groceries, our web banking, distance, and more. Can we re-emphasize the importance of supporting restaurateurs by going to the restaurant, getting meals, greeting them or sharing an experience in the dining room to stop time?
Restoration cannot be reduced to the contribution of the GDP of a state based on the robustness of the supply chain, on the quality of the agri-food sector. We must consider that catering is a vector of Quebec’s cultural identity and the mirror of our model of hospitality. Support restaurateurs to finally start reducing shared stress and live a little more as if the restaurant was a place that contributes to the health of its customers.
The little fire is enough.
1. Study by the GastronomiQc Lab, joint ITHQ-Laval University research unit, on independent restaurant business models in Quebec in times of COVID: preliminary results, November 2021