Food in the Time of Coronavirus: Can Local Restaurants Save Themselves in Time?

When we all emerge in 2 to 12 weeks from our COVID-19 induced ‘social distancing’, we could find ourselves wandering the devastated remnants of America’s local restaurant scene.

To avoid that painful situation, restaurant owners and chefs will have to act quickly, effectively, and in a manner they’ve never before shown they can handle.

I’m hoping this article can put some of them on the right path with practical tips they can act on today. If you know someone that needs to read this, please share it with them.

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Actions to start taking today.

Understand that you are not in the hospitality business anymore. For now.

What you are doing is a form of E-Commerce with a heavy dose of Marketing. You have entered a sector of the food business with leaner margins, more competition, and a whole different set of skills and rules. Unfortunately, you still have restaurant overhead.

This will be painful. I’m not saying it won’t be, but to survive this you first must change your mindset.

Grub Hub, Postmark, and Uber Eats will not save you, but you might need to use them for a time.

These companies hold a significant amount of the mental availability within the food delivery space. There is no surprise that they were the first companies that came to mind when this all started. Everybody else thought of them as well.

This is going to be a bloody fight against every other restaurant in your town, including many with lower costs and more experience playing the food delivery game. This is called a “Red Ocean.”

The food delivery apps also know that you are in a dire situation and they have the access to the customer that you need. They are gong to make you pay for the privilege of using their platform.

What you need to do is create your own access to your customer.

Attract the customer yourself and either deliver it yourself or inspire them to pick it up from you.

That is going to take discipline, courage, creativity, and a strong focus on science-based marketing and internet commerce.

Don’t worry. I’ll show you how.

Find your Hero among your front of house employees.

Statistically speaking, there is someone in your front of house team - probably between 21 and 30 years old - who is excellent at their own social media and internet presence. Find them. Keep them. And pay them well. They are going to help you save your restaurant.

If you are going to be able to capture the attention and wallet of your community as it “shelters in place” or “social distances,” you will have to be where their attention is.

Their attention will be on their phones.

The amount of screen time we are all going to spend throughout this will be astronomical as we follow the spread of the virus and the chaos that surrounds it.

Find the Face of your restaurant … and get ready to show the world that face.

Maybe this is the owner? Maybe it is the Chef? Whoever it is, they need to instantly get comfortable being the face of the restaurant, because we are going to build a human connection to this business. Fast - and at scale.

This might be very difficult for some people - I get it - but you are fighting for survival.

TV has taught us that restauranteurs and chefs are celebrities. If aren’t a local celeb yet, you’re going to have to become one quickly.

Start talking to your community. Every day. Sometimes more than once a day.

The occasional pretty picture of food, neatly styled and lit by a professional photographer, isn’t going to cut it any more. You need the Face of the restaurant speaking to your local community online.

This doesn’t need to be polished and well composed. You certainly don’t need hair and makeup. What you do need is honesty, intimacy, a little bit of fun, and a willingness to let your community know what you are going through.

There are many ways to do this. Facebook Live and Instagram Live are excellent options. If you’ve got a video-experienced Hero, then maybe YouTube is one the table.

I’m a huge fan of the power of video for this, but there are other ways and you’ll have to find your own path.

What kind of content do you need to produce?

• 5-10 minute updates about what you are going through and how you feel about it. Talking directly to the camera.

• Tours of the kitchen

• Profiles of every dish that you currently offer. Maybe a bit showing the preparation of that dish.

• Demonstration of the process of pickup or delivery. “Where do I park?’ etc…

• Profiles of the wine that you sell. Use your Sommelier or Wine Steward if they are still with you.

• Demonstrations of kitchen cleanliness and how seriously you are taking their health and safety.

• Take advice from your Hero. They probably have a better idea of how this works than you do.

• Anything else that shows your personality. Avoid politics and social issues unless that is a core part of your company branding.

Be willing to spend money promoting your social media content.

For every one dollar or minute that your spend creating content, spend 5 dollars or five minutes promoting it. You can’t risk your business on the chance that you might “go viral.”

The wonderful benefit to you today is the ability to target Facebook and Instagram advertising within geographic parameters. It doesn’t matter if everybody in New York City is watching your content if you need sales in Toledo, Ohio. Facebook will show you how to do this. It is in their best interest that you are successful with these ads. You’ll buy more of them and everybody makes money.

I can already hear you saying that you can’t afford it. Please remember that you are fighting for your business’ survival. Plus the cost of an effective campaign is going to be less money than the percentages you’ll give away to companies like Grub Hub and Uber Eats.

Reach out to local media

Earned media is a powerful thing, but “This Restaurant is Suffering” will sadly not be newsworthy. What might get their attention is the way that you are using digital technology to build a new business model to combat the challenging times. Perhaps you’ll be featured in segments with the main news anchors instead of the food critic.

Don’t forget your email list of regular customers.

Email is still one of the most powerful sales and marketing tools in the world. You’ll need to use it. I hope you have a strong list, full of local customers because that will be very helpful. Here are a couple tips.

Try to reach out at least once a week with a very human email. Talk about what is happening. The good and the bad. We aren’t trying to close the deal here. We are reminding them that your exist, are a real person, and that they want you to continue existing.

Occasionally throw an aggressive discount their way. I’d price the discount at around the percentage that you are giving up with Grub Hub and Uber Eats.

Make sure they know how much they mean to you, because they really do.

Sell wine .. if your state will let you.

Unfortunately, you aren’t going to get the same high margins that restaurants normally enjoy. The takeout customer has many other places they can buy wine for consumption at home - at 1/3 or less of the normal restaurant price - and you don’t want it to cross their mind that you might be gouging. You can probably get a few dollars above the normal retail price in your state.

The great advantage your have is that your can partner with local small wine distributors who can offer boutique wines that don’t have much retail sales presence. You’ll be helping them out as well because their sales will also be severely depressed.

Are you an Italian Restaurant? Be your town’s source for curated Italian wines. Are you a farm-to-table place? Maybe you have a collection of funky natural wines. Chinese restaurant? Feature Alsatian Riesling and cloudy cider.

Whatever fits your brand.

So what are we really trying to do?

Modern science-based marketing is all about CEPs - Consciousness Entry Points. To simplify, it is all about creating moments and touch points where the customer thinks about you. The customer used to think about you in connection to your hospitality, the decor, and the experience of your restaurant. Maybe that was more relevant to their enjoyment than food quality.

In the time of Coronavirus, they will have other things on their mind.

The CEPs that you built with your community have been broken and you need to build them quickly and at scale.

Hopefully, you now have a few tools that can help.

Good Luck and Godspeed!

Cartizze: Prosecco's Greatest Vineyard

Visit the greatest vineyard for Prosecco: the Cartizze Vineyard in Valdobbiadene, Italy. Bisol Prosecco takes us to their piece of the Cartizze Vineyard. We drink Prosecco while he explains the vineyard's importance.

After returning to the Bisol winery, we'll get an explanation of how Prosecco is made and what is the challenge behind making a natural wine prosecco with no sulfites.

Check out the six-minute video or read a transcript below.

This is Episode #71 of Understanding Wine with Austin Beeman.

Download the Video directly here. // Subscribe to the Video Podcast Here

Transcript:

105 hectares divided in 154 owners. And one acre is $1 million. And that's make it the most expensive single plots in Italy. And using the French words, here the terroir is perfect. So have different soil, Cartizze which is this one, this rock, top sandy soil, south facing, the winds coming from the valley, which is cool down during the day, and make this Terroir unique. Which make the grapes, only at this vineyard, we've got fully ripeness, rich fruits, but retain the acidity.

Prosecco is a sparkling wine. But not like the Champagne and Cava. It is made with the charmant method, or as we call it the metodo Italiano, Italian method. So we press [the grapes.] There is over there the de-stemmer, it's a long screw, we separate the stem and the grapes. After it goes in this press, one, two, and three press, where it is a kind of pipe which gently press the grapes. Really important the gentle press because we don't want bitterness from the seeds. After got the grape juice, it's filtrated and it goes in a normal tank. For the normal tank, the yeast, the sugar and produce alcohol. And that's the way 99% of the wine is made. Harvest, de-stemming, pressing, tank, where fermentation.

The Champagne and Cava goes in the bottle with the addition of sugar and the yeast because they want to secondary aroma, maturity, complexity. For us,Prosecco is all about uncomplicated aroma. It's all about the freshness. It's all about the easy fruitiness. You drink it, and leave a nice, refreshing, fruit driven. And that's why the Prosecco has been so successful. You give a glass of Prosecco to everybody, and they want the bottle. Because it's got lower acidity compared to Champagne. Smaller, fine, elegant bubble. A touch of sugar to make it more soft and more gentle on the palate. And lower alcohol. And that's why I call it the uncomplicated bubble.

You open it, you drink, and you enjoy. It's ready 24/7.

All our vineyards are organically farmed. But the only problem Valdobbiadene, the average plot is less than one hectares. So we've got one hectare here, two, three, five. Only one place we've got 20 hectares, so 50 acres, which are organic certified. But it goes, blend into the wine. So the vinification is as natural as possible. That's why we came out in '09 with a Prosecco with no use of sulfites. It's just grape juice, natural yeast, and nothing else. Its as natural as possible.

Lenné Estate with Proprietor Steve Lutz

Take a walk on Lenné Estate with the Proprietor Steve Lutz. This small estate in the Yamhill Carlton AVA of Willamette Valley, Oregon has - To hear Steve Lutz tell it - the poorest soil imaginable. “The worst in the county,” he boasts with pride and bravado. That’s because the depleted ancient sedimentary soil, outside of Yamhill, OR. he believes, is the best in which to grow Pinot Noir grapes.

Check out the six-minute video or read a transcript below.

This is Episode #70 of Understanding Wine with Austin Beeman.

Download the Video directly here. // Subscribe to the Video Podcast Here

Special Thanks to Carl Giavanti https://carlgiavanticonsulting.com

Transcript:

Steve Lutz:

In fact, I burned out a clutch on this hillside. I burned the clutch of the tractor out trying to stop and start and hand water with a pull tank. It was really difficult to keep them alive. We don't have irrigation here and in the beginning, we just didn't have a water source. So we dry farmed all this and of all the blocks, this was definitely the most difficult.

I'm Steve Lutz, owner of Lenné Estate in the heart of the Yamhill Carlton-Appellation in the northern Willamette Valley. We have 21 acres here. Small, south-facing slope which is really what you want in this part of Oregon.

We're sitting at an elevation of about 424 feet here and we go up to an elevation of about 585 feet. In Oregon, there's basically three parameters for great vineyards and that's elevation, orientation, and aspect.

This particular area, the Yamhill-Carlton Appellation, is all sedimentary soil. It was old ocean floor that got pushed up when the plates collided about 16 million years ago and so it's basically sandstone and silt stone.

So we're kind of in the cross hairs of the vineyard here in the middle where we have blocks going out each way and interestingly enough, the whole soil type here is a soil type called Peavine which is a very poor sedimentary soil. It's actually considered one of the worst sedimentary soils in the county by the county. Really one of the worst agricultural soils, but that's what we want for growing grapes.

We want soils that control the vines' vigor, that make the vine struggle a little bit more to produce canopy, and give us smaller, thicker-skinned berries.

So if you were to come and look at these mountain vineyards with these very poor soil types, you would see that the berries are much smaller than vineyards closer to the valley floor where they have a lot more nutrients.

So really, the best wines in the world come from the poorest soils and that's why you'll see in this part of the northern Willamette Valley, you'll see that most of the great vineyard sites are on these steeper, south-facing slopes.

So the vineyard is broken up into blocks and these first six rows here are a specific clone called 114 and then we transition into our 115 block. This is Pommard on the other side and then up top we have more Pommard and we have two other clones split up in a block we call Kill Hill up above which we'll take a closer look at.

So everything we do here is kind of modeled after Burgundy. It's called single guyot and vertical trellising. We train all these canes up this trellis, exposing the leaves to sunlight and the fruiting zone is really interesting here. Because we're getting warmer here, we're starting to move the fruiting wire a little bit up off the ground.

If you go to Burgundy, you'll see that the fruiting wires are way down because they want to get that radiant heat from the ground and we used to do that as well.

We used to keep them much closer, but over the last few years we're responding to some of these warmer vinages and we're gradually moving the fruiting wire a little bit higher because we don't need all this heat because we've got plenty of heat the last few years and we really are not sure where that's going to go.

We can always adjust them back down if we start having much cooler vinages, but I think obviously the warmth is here to stay for a while and so we're responding to it in some of our farming practices.

This was old ocean floor and it's really compressed silt stone and sandstone. If you dug down into this, you would get these orange-ish, yellow-ish chunks of compressed silt stone and you can see there's just not a lot of organic matter in this particular soil.

These vines are going to have to work a little bit harder and they'll produce more intense fruit than if we grew them in a nutrient-rich soil base.

We chose different clones for diversity. We had a pretty good idea of what clones would work in this soil type when we started and because this is a fairly homogenous site although there are certainly differences in this site even in this little 21 acres, because we are fairly homogenous though, we wanted to add diversity through clonal diversity because each clone has its own personality.

We do have five different clones here at Lenné and I love to blend those clones together. Sometimes they enhance each other, but we also like to feature single clones here as well. So we have four single clone wines we make here which is really interesting because you get to see the personality of each clone. Some are more black fruited, some are more red fruited, and even though the year changes every year, the personality of the clone always stays the same.

So out of this small 21 acre site, we're making now eight different Pinot Noirs and also Chardonnay and a rosé in some years. 

www.lenneestate.com