COVID-19: The Restaurant Industry Can't WFH

Amrita Amesur looks into the implications of COVID-19 on the restaurant industry, and what it means for the consumer.

It was only [two] weeks ago that we were going about our regular lives, sipping Americanos, eating chaat on street corners, making dinner reservations, ordering take-out for dinner and catching Friday night drinks at the neighbourhood watering hole. How things have changed since.

The clang of bells and plates, and the clarion calls of ‘work from home,’ begged the question — What will we eat now that we can’t go out? Or order in. And what of the restaurant industry — can they work from home, can a daily wage earner and milk-man abandon his post, can a farmer abandon his crop? Will we still eat the way we always have, as plentifully and with luxurious abandon? Will we still have food at the end of this calamity?

Our food system was crippled in a matter of hours; would the industry be able make it through this ordeal, and live to tell the tale? Staring down the barrel of oblivion, overnight, restaurants around the world ran through their meagre reserves, laid off their staff and shut their doors. Others took to the internet to showcase just how dangerously close they were to shutting shop, asking for help from the government, landlords, tax collectors and patrons. 

In India, with borders sealed and transportation halted, farms now have no labour to harvest crops in the peak of Rabi season and if harvested, no markets to sell it in. And if we miss Kharif planting season, we may really have no food at all, a few months from now. The already distressing levels of farmer suicides will see a fresh peak if essential goods and crops are not appropriately transported.

Meanwhile, with no prior intimation of the lockdown, restaurants forced to shut down found their monthly ration and stocks of food going to waste, with limited mobility or means to even donate to shelters and community kitchens.

Not enough can be said of the role that restaurants, small and large, have played in our food systems, especially in the last two decades, where the food universe has seen a renaissance, from the monolithic cuisine of the early 90s. Yet, world over, iconic restaurants are having to shut their doors.

The overwhelming sentiment of the restaurant industry in India is that we need to take care of our people: ensure that they are safe and fed, with a roof over their heads and a job to come back to. According to the president of the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI), Anurag Katriar, the restaurant and food services industry employees about 7.3 million people in the country. And if not bailed out, they will be facing a minimum of 15-20% job cuts, which translates to 1.5 million Indians jobless within the next couple of months alone. The NRAI, representing the interests of over 5 lakh restaurants pan India, has appealed to the finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, for immediate relief for the restaurant industry. They’ve requested for concessions and delays on taxes and rent, moratoriums on loan repayments, so that restaurants can use their limited reserves to take care of their employees, small suppliers and contract labour, instead of being buried under statutory payments due at the end of the financial year.

The food and restaurant industry supports a whole host of smaller economies — farmers, fishermen, meat vendors, vegetable growers, delivery agencies, cloud kitchens, dabba waalas, grocery stores, markets and countless small eateries. They in turn feed and employ the masses. Dependent on this delicate ecosystem are the food writers, recipe testers, cookbook authors and diners — upon whom it falls to speak up, and save the industry.

Alex Sanchez of Americano, Mumbai

Gauri Deivdayal & Jay Yousuf of The Table, Mumbai

Gauri Devidayal, director of Food Matters India, who runs several restaurants in Mumbai including The Table and Mag. Street Kitchen, believes the difference between restaurants and other businesses lies in the burden of massive fixed overheads in the form of rent, utilities and labour, eating into 50-70% of their revenue. These massive outgoings can only be met by way of a constant influx of cash from day-to-day business operations. Even a few days of shutting shop can cripple the finances of such precarious cash-flow-based business models. A month of shutdown is a death sentence for most, especially since they are all continuing to pay salaries, and feed their staff through this unforeseen time. “Laying off our people is the worst thing that could happen,” says Pankil Shah of Neighbourhood Hospitality, owner of the iconic Woodside Inn in Colaba. What’s also often overlooked, is that restaurants have to hire twice as much staff than any other business, for the two shifts os service, since restaurants are open from 8 am to 2 am on most days – that alone is double the wages per day.

Another unforeseen setback is the heavy reliance on staff meals at restaurants. Most employees working in the restaurant industry, largely immigrants from small towns, have no wherewithal, rations or functional kitchens in their homes to be able to feed themselves when at work. They’ve always relied on staff meals at the restaurant to supply them with two square meals a day. Most employers worry that starvation will kill them much before the effects of Coronavirus. Chef Vikram Arora, running an independent restaurant called Tamak in Khar, Mumbai, has given free access to his staff to collect all their home grocery needs from the restaurant stores and pantry. He has even given them induction cookers to be able to cook at home, for restaurant staff having no other way to feed themselves during this time. Edible Archives in Goa, a farm-to-table restaurant run by Anumitra Ghosh Dastidar, relies on their garden produce to feed staff on a day-to-day basis.

For Kuhu Kochar who runs an artisanal chocolate factory in Jaipur, All Things Chocolate, employing staff from rural Rajasthan and also holding residence for some of them on factory premises, the situation has been crippling. The sudden end of business, sales to restaurants, movie theatres, hotels and the end of gifting, will hit this small self-funded business venture as they continue to bear the burden of rent, utilities, salaries. Not to mention the ripple effect on all independent cocoa, sugar, nut farmers and suppliers, who supply to them.

Anumitra Ghosh Dastidar of Edible Archives, Goa

Divya Prabhakar and Vishal Shetty of Bengaluru Oota Co.

Divya Prabhakar of Bengaluru Oota Company indicated that they’ve been ostensibly saved from a heavy blow, on account of Oota’s conservative business model — pre-booking of meals (and hence no wastage or excessive purchase in anticipation of expected clientele, unlike a regular dine-in restaurant). One of the first to shift to a take-away model, they continue to operate on a small scale during the lockdown, for pre-ordered food available for take-out.

For those trying to remain in business by transitioning to a take-away model, challenges include risk to the staff along with the unpredictability of delivery services. Most have chosen to remain shut during the lockdown, opening on certain days to have functional kitchen with minimal staff, for take-away only.

Kainaz Contractor, running Rustom’s, a Parsi restaurant in Delhi, is deeply concerned that the restaurant business will never be the same again, even once this blows over. She expects that footfall will continue to be low, and stresses that dine-in restaurants will need to reconsider their business models, and drastically cut down expenses to make restaurants operationally profitable at the very least, perhaps supplementing income through innovative delivery models and other collaborative projects.

Chef Manish Mehrotra, of the award-winning Indian Accent in Delhi, has another concern: the availability of reliable produce, and a possible change in the diet of his clientele, post-pandemic. He fears there may be a radical shift in eating patterns altogether — will people still want to eat chicken, or red meat? Has the panic of the outbreak changed our preferences for good?

“In a perfect world, we would be able to put everything on pause — rent, taxes, license fees, debts, all of it,” sighs Chef Alex Sanchez of Americano in South Bombay. “In order for the majority of restaurants to survive this, for every month that no revenue comes in, there should be no money going out.  And because payroll can't be put on pause, additional government assistance would be required to cover employee salaries and benefits.” 

Echoing what is also being advocated by David Chang of the Momofuku empire in the US, through campaigns like #SaveRestaurants, illustrating how restaurants with their wafer-thin profit margins are, in fact ‘Too small to fail.’ Outstandings like rent and taxes need to be waived for the affected time, not deferred to another day, compounded with penalties and interest for an inevitable but delayed death.

The outbreak of this pandemic has brought into sharp relief the gross over-consumption of limited resources. Chef Jose Andres through the World Central Kitchen, a non-profit organisation has been providing emergency food relief in the wake of natural disasters, like the tsunamis in Indonesia andHurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Their program to tackle COVID-19 in the United States, #ChefsForAmerica, runs community kitchens across the country offering affordable or free meals to those in need. He is also teaching us to feed ourselves at home and respect limited, simple ingredients through his #RecipesForThePeople series, as he cooks at home with his daughters. Chef Prateek Sadhu of Masque is using this time to talk about reducing food waste; using vegetable peels, odds and ends — what he refers to as ‘by-products’ (and not trash) in our kitchens — to make stocks and tisanes, ensuring holistic usage of the scarce produce we have available.

The NRAI is also raising funds to mobilize community kitchens in India, and using resources available at the hands of the restaurant industry to #FeedTheNeedy. Through this program, the NRAI is looking to distribute 10 million meals to the poor, to migrants, and those impacted by the outbreak and spread of the pandemic, during lockdown.

With more people spending time in their kitchen, we are certainly moving towards a cautiousness in consumption, and a dip in disposable expenditure. Eating out may be a luxury most can ill-afford in the months to come. A pragmatic Anumitra Ghosh Dastidar of Edible Archives points out, “Restaurants will have to work within a shrinking economy, where people aren't eating out, and with a completely new kind of supply chain, for example, reducing the reliance on imported ingredients, working with possible shortages, or higher prices. This will mean having to reinvent everything from the menu and pricing, to staffing strategies. We plan to turn even more to local, seasonal and sustainable produce, and hope the rest of the industry also sees this as a chance to think about ensuring sustainability in a time of increasing uncertainty.”

But despite all odds, Alex Sanchez believes that culturally, we are going to see a surge of creativity and adaptation, which will only make India a more interesting place to dine out. It’s time for a new renaissance — here’s hoping.

Banner image: Zen Cafe, Mumbai

Amrita Amesur is a corporate lawyer by profession and is deeply passionate about food. You can follow her adventures on Instagram.

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