Like it or not, we’ve all been much more familiar with the generation recently. While the likelihood of face-to-face interaction has declined, they have been temporarily replaced by invitations to live meetings, telemedicine controls, and even virtual marriages organized through remote officials. All people under the age of 50 are likely to have a story about how to help a parent or grandparent be told “how to zoom,” as my mother-in-law once said.
Food corporations are no exception. Faced with dramatic drops in face-to-face favoritism (or mask mask), they were forced to revise their strategic plans only to stay afloat. For many, temporarily adapting has also meant an inevitable adoption of online technologies.
As before, more
At first glance, Beal’s Lobster Pier wouldn’t strike anyone as a high-tech operation. The traditional New England seafood shack stands knee-deep on saltwater-slicked pilings sunk into the mud of Southwest Harbor, where the restaurant has been for half a century. Tack on another 30-plus years for its still-bustling seafood pier.
Behind the scenes, Beal’s control has transferred much of its wholesale and retail activities nationwide to online automation and execution. And in 2019, the company introduced an app-based menu for its restaurant, allowing you to order your website online ChowNow.com.
According to co-owner Stu Snyder, the app was successful, but not overwhelmingly. That’s until Memorial Day, when the restaurant reopened for the season. “We may only be open to removing it because of the restrictions. But we promoted the app more and it exploded,” he said. “In addition, we’ve added more technology. We have set a separate SMS number so that consumers can tell us when they arrived, so we can make an absolutely contactless delivery and send orders to their cars.”
Beal also chose to continue delivering on the street after he reopened for food inside on June 18, a resolution Snyder considers vital to retaining and expanding his visitor base. “People are exposed to this new technology, for whatever reason, and they are adapting quickly. So we’re going to continue to be, even if things are downstream,” he said. “We never want to lose who we are, but we also want to stay up-to-date and welcome smart consumers.”
An extensive course in course correction
Not everyone has been so eager to adapt. Ask Bob Cutler, the owner of the upscale Novio’s restaurant in Bangor, whose original business plan expressed his intentions in capital letters and ambitious. “He said ‘DO NOT TAKE’ there. I never sought to put food in a box,” he said. “Now we’re doing everything we can to survive, and everything’s fine.”
When the state announced plans to close in mid-March, Cutler locked himself in his workplace for 4 hours to chart a new trajectory for Boyfriend. “I sat down with the chef and developed a new menu. That’s the simplest part,” he said. “Then I started running with Square (a retail point and an online shopping platform), and I had to figure out how to attach it to our website.”
The first week was an agony: only $100 of orders were shipped online. But as Cutler and his team spread the word on social media, business resumed, so much so that Boyfriend continues to offer takeaway online more than a month after the reopening of his dining room.
And Cutler doesn’t anticipate that he’ll be gone soon: “Why would we? It’s a new and simple added value, especially for other people who are able to eat in a place to eat,” he said. “Honestly, I think we’re going to be doing this for a long time. People will be waiting for you. I mean, I like sidewalk picking at Target. I’d hate it if they took it away.”
Robin Ray, chef and owner of Maple’s Bakery and Café in Yarmouth, also believes his Boast of Takeaway Square is far away. “We’ve put in a lot of paints and efforts to set up our online ordering system, doing it very well and making it as warm and easy to use as possible,” he said. “I wish it was just a palliative. I need to see other people in the store, have the hustle and bustle, the satisfaction when you do something and you see someone enjoying your food. On the other hand, I’m too realistic. I don’t see us going back to business as usual.”
For Robin Ray and his daughter, the manager of the Scout Ray house, the good fortune of their Square-based online takeaway business represents a relentless mastery of technology unknown in the past. “There was a hiccups on the way. The first few weeks, we felt that every week we had to resolve the disorders within an hour of opening the site. There was no IT department. It was Scout and me in the kitchen. table, disconnecting and restarting the PC to make it work,” Ray said.
But, as they quickly discovered, customers were desperate for Maple’s baked goods after nearly a month without them. “The second week, we had told people what time we were going to turn the site on (orders were placed on Wednesday for collection that Saturday), and I was sitting with the iPad, just watching,” Scout Ray said. “Suddenly we had probably 20 orders come through at once. I said, ‘Oh my god, we’re about to sell out of 900 bagels in 10 minutes!’ And it was seven minutes later, they were all gone. It was shocking, because that would take us three hours on a steady, really busy Christmas Eve when people are just buying dozens.”
Two weeks later, Maple sold 1,500 muffins in less than an hour.
Robin Ray attributes part of the volume of those first few weeks to the accumulated demand, and others to the effortless nature of impulsive purchases.
This is a fringe merit that Hillevi Jaegerman, interim farm manager of Basket Island Oyster Company, understands. While wholesale and catering orders for Hull Bay oyster supplier have disappeared, the company has followed a new style of business that is technology-oriented, replaced and geared towards spontaneous shopping.
Instead of presenting its Twitter, Instagram and Facebook posts to advertising customers, as before, Basket Island has to deal with consumers directly, guiding them to 4 remote refrigerators installed in employees’ homes in Sack and Portland (including one on Peaks Island), where $20 will give you a dozen Oysters from Basket Island or Wolfe’s Neck , and if you wish, prepare a knife to peel for $10 more.
“Now, when we publish, we expect our own neighbors to see it,” Jaegerman said. “We need other people to come into a refrigerator and see the little sign we paint by hand.”
Bonus: Remote socialization
As old-fashioned as a fresher formula of honor and a slate sound, the generation draws on other details of Basket Island’s new business: online invoices processed through Venmo. A practical resolution at a time when other people are hesitation in taking care of money or checks, the ability to pay through the cellular device also creates an area for possibility and spontaneity.
“If someone jogs in the neighborhood, they probably won’t bring much money,” Jaegerman said. “This allows them to pick up a dozen oysters on the way home. It’s because there’s no contact, it’s easy and Venmo has a genuine sense of community.”
With this, Jaegerman refers to the social media style stream where every payment sent through Venmo appears, visual from around the world, with a brief note on the payment. Visit the Basket Island Venmo account (Hillevi-Jaegerman) and see many thank you and mini reviews, sumptuous with emojis.
“That’s how I met other people who live in my neighborhood I’ve never met before. Now I see them when their names appear in Venmo, and I rarely send them a little message,” Jaegerman said. “I have a circle of relative friends in Virginia whose sister said to her, “I like the fact that every weekend I see Hillevi getting a lot of oyster emojis, ” so it’s a long way off, but she can live up to who I am. doing.”
Even when the generation behind the order is not inherently social, consumers locate tactics to use it and send messages to owners. In Boyfriend, consumers use Square’s “Special Order Notes” box to send motivating notes to employees. “It’s great because morale is easy to lose when there are so many extra steps and pressures in everything you do,” Cutler said.
In addition to excellent breath notes, Robin and Scout Ray also locate jokes attached to the controls. At Maple, they’re more effective than consumers might think. Because all incoming orders are posted simultaneously at various stalls (kitchen, barista stand and check-out), all staff see the joke at the same time, causing waves of laughter throughout the bakery.
But, according to Scout Ray, an accidentally funny incident made the team feel hooked (and funny) by their temporarily remote customers. “A user sent us a message asking us to wait to finish their order, saying, “We haven’t dressed yet!” And everyone thought it was very funny. We just had so much excitement thinking about the other people sitting there, who ordered naked doughnuts.
Andrew Ross has written about food and catering in New York and the United Kingdom. He and his paintings have appeared on Martha Stewart Living Radio and The New York Times. He received 3 Maine Press Association Critics Awards.
Contact him at: [email protected]
Twitter: @AndrewRossME
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