Catching up with friends over a cold beer at your favourite watering hole, trying out a new food joint in town, driving over to a beach-side shack for some seafood and salty air. These are a few of our favourite things which we haven’t done in over 40 days. However, the end of the lockdown will signal a ‘new normal’ and social life may not exactly be what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic.
In cities such as Chennai which has seen a steady uptick in cases, restaurants - which are major points of social contact - may function differently. TNM spoke to a few Chennai based restaurant owners, some of whom say that the pandemic has, for all intents and purposes, altered the restaurant/resto bar business for the anticipated future.
This could mean a new wave of tech-driven dining interface where robots could replace polite serving staff, paper menu cards will make way for mobile phones and drones could zoom around to spray clean door knobs, countertops and other touch points - if one is futuristic. It also implies smaller changes which could significantly alter customer experience in food outlets.
Small changes
In patisseries and cafes, attractive glass shelves with baked goods could disappear. Instead a limited stock of items kept at a distance from each other will be displayed.
“In order to limit customer interaction and movement, we have been asked to reduce the number of items on display. This, so that there is not much moving around and checking out of food. Customers can maintain distance from each other as they view the items displayed. They can then make the purchase and exit the store,” says Harshit Patel, Director of Shree Mithai, a popular Chennai based-sweet shop cum restaurant with branches in Adyar, Annanagar, Chetpet etc.
Further, customer-friendly services such as ‘trying out ice-cream flavours’, where guests can taste a tiny spoonful of ice cream before buying a scoop or two, will now stop, as it means risk of exposure to the virus.
Meanwhile, portable hand wash and alcohol-based hand rubs have already been placed outside most stores. Post lockdown too, masks and sanitizers are here to stay, as physical distancing in restaurants - like in any public place - will now be a norm. Joints will also not function at full capacity due to curbs on the number of customers allowed to enter.
“Most joints will probably be taking in half their total capacity. Moreover, I don’t believe dine-ins will be encouraged anytime soon. So most restaurants will remodel their business around takeaways and deliveries through mobile apps, as we want to look out for our customers and staff,” Harshit adds.
Regi Mathew, head chef and culinary director of Kappa Chakka Kandhari, which has locations in Chennai and Bengaluru, says that they are planning to completely digitise the menu so customers will be able to order directly from their mobile phones. “We’re also going to reduce the crossover between tables by the waiters. You’re going to have dedicated servers for a specific table,” he says. They are also considering switching entirely to banana leaves, which won’t require washing or reuse.
Contactless dining
In fact, restaurant aggregators such as Zomato have already introduced tech for a post-lockdown world.
With their ‘contactless dining’ service, Zomato will allow customers to scan QR codes for e-menus of restaurants, order by clicking on the dishes and then make the payment via mobile wallets or net banking through the app. According to Zomato, the move is to “get the restaurant industry to bounce back faster by adopting technology based safety solutions” and also to offer the customer“ a full stack tech enabled dining experience with the least risk to health and safety.”
Shree Mithai also plans to encourage in-store takeaways by ordering from their website, and deliveries shortly. Harshit adds that where earlier, different floors of a store catered to sweets, savoury, chaat and other food groups, now shops can repurpose their floors to deliver all food categories in every section, in order to limit customer movement.
Food packaging
According to Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) guidelines issued to restaurants, employers have been asked to limit contacts between serving staff and customers, by coming up with new strategies.
And limited contact with customers could mean many things. Primarily, it can change dining experiences unique to Indian cuisine, says Harshit. Take for example chaat items such as the Golgappa or Paani Puri which is made and dropped into the bowls of waiting customers to be eaten fresh.
“This will now change the way food is packaged and we will have an ‘assemble and eat’ model, where we will pack the poori, the stuffing and the sauce separately and the customers can make their puris and eat it. This has already been our take away packaging model.In fact, chains such as Little Italy are already parcelling Pizza ingredients - with base, sauce and toppings separately. Guests can order it, put it all together and have,” he adds.
A quieter night-out
Arasu Dennis, consultant at Off The Record, BOATS and former manager of Zaras The Tapas Bar (now Sera) says that resto-bars cannot hope to make profits in the near future as functioning at full capacity appears out of the question at the moment.
“Table spacing will be an issue as we will spread out the seats. Tables will be spread out to ensure one metre gap and this means that dine-in experiences will be more private. Entry will only be limited to a specific number of guests according to physical distancing rules laid out by the Corporation. Servers too will be asked to wear masks and gloves and beverages including cocktails will be prepared with the highest hygiene standards,” says Arasu.
This could also imply that the typical bar experience with guests thronging at counters and staff mixing up cocktails in front of them will be significantly pared down. Physical distancing could mean that the ‘bar experience’ could turn into a quieter affair.
At Kappa Chakka Kandhari, they are also considering creating time slots for diners to prevent overcrowding at the restaurant and avoid customers from having to wait around for a table, Mathew says.
A different dine-in culture
However, some in the industry believe that the dine-in experience is not going anywhere post lockdown.
Sandesh Reddy, chef and owner of Sandy’s Chocolate Laboratory, Sea Salt and other restaurants says that the pandemic may not spell doom for dine-ins as it is, afterall, integral to the city’s social culture.
“Transactional business, I believe, will not be the only model which will survive post lockdown. If that were the case, then take-away only enterprises should have thrived during lockdown, But many haven’t survived and store fronts have still made money,” Sandesh says.
He adds that what would possibly come out of this lockdown is a reimagined dining-experience, which would interest the customer, while maintaining safety standards.
“We don’t want to jump the gun and change our model before there is clarity on the near future. Because changes and reversal too cost money. Besides, experiential dining should survive in one form or the other and we will look at various scenarios and the supply chain shifts to come up with reimagined spaces/experiences for the people,” he adds.
Mathew also believes that as long as changes are planned in advance, customers will adapt to new systems of dining. "I don't think they will lose anything from the dining experience. I think it will be slightly tweaked to take care of their safety. Ultimately, this is being done for the safety of customers and staff."
With inputs from Nikhita Venugopal