Don’t let Pete Wells get you down.
The future for restaurants is bright —we just have to survive the super weird teenage phase.
Happy afternoon, all! ☕️
Usually I’m off from my day job on Mondays (the good ol’ service weekend) meaning I have time to sit at my desk, drink too much coffee, stare into space, and finally get down to trying to beat all my deadlines.
Today, however, I am working a rare shift at a cafe, which means I’ve been drinking espresso instead of water all morning. (It also means this letter may have typos and maybe some format errors, since I’ve been editing it on the fly, clearly overcaffeinated, both my keyboard and myself at a wavering 30%.)
Its always fun to reflect on the state of service in real time as disgruntled addicts stammer their way through an uncaffeinated fog and re-emerge, happier and brighter on their way out the door.
I like working in small cafes, although it can never match the powerful rush of working a line. I like watching people react to hospitality in real time. It reminds me that service is a series of degrees — small details that become collective impressions. Predicting people’s needs and meeting them preemptively is one of my favorite tricks. You know what someone wants before they do; you can alter their outlook with the most subtle of tweaks.
You’re the magician.
The space I’m working in today is an exceptional environment: it’s small, has a very strong old-school vibe, gives people what they want, and allows me to work alone. It’s a five-hour experiment. I can test different demeanors on folks— the East Coast requires noticeably less friendliness, no superfluous “Hey, how are ya’s” — and adjust the playlist accordingly.
I can slide bartenders an extra shot of espresso in exchange for their eternal gratitude, expanding the hidden network of local service workers who always turn out to be my best sources and most interesting friends. Most of all, I can feel the pulse of the community and try to understand the picture at large from everyone’s perspective.
It tells me a lot.
Now, let’s take a look at this week’s state of the industry.
✍️”I Reviewed Restaurants for 12 Years. They’ve Changed, and Not for the Better.”
Pete Wells, the critic best known for his scathing view of Guy Fieri’s American Kitchen & Bar, has penned his last official article as the NYT food reviewer. He follows in the footsteps of the famous Frank Bruni, William Grimes, and Bryan Miller. (Replacement critic is still under wraps/TBD.)
I’ll admit, I found Pete’s final article… depressing, frankly. (You can read it here if you need to get past the paywall.)
“Many of the little routines of dining that we used to handle by talking to a person now happen on a screen. When we go to Shake Shack, we order and pay for our burger and frozen custard on a screen. In some places, we enter our names on the waiting list for tables on a screen. We scan QR codes so we can read the menu on a screen. Restaurants are turning into vending machines with chairs,” he writes.
While I understand the sentiment, I can’t help but feel that this approach is somewhat archaic. In what I’ve been calling the post-pandemic restaurant hellscape, the loss of human touch might feel more bleak than ever, but that’s looking too closely, too granular. I, too, have been guilty of catastrophizing the state of things, focusing perhaps too many reports on a hurting industry.
We can’t see the forest for the trees, and I’m sorry, Mr. Wells, but this approach is outdated — to lament the past rather than embrace the future — and perfectly encapsulates why it’s time for someone else to take over the job.
This new technology isn’t going anywhere. Bemoaning it doesn’t bring back phone reservations and paper menus.
If anything, I wish it had read as a challenge: how can we use this broad new technology to appeal to diner’s shifting tastes without sacrificing excellent hospitality, the level of service we all crave? As a reviewer, if these things are being done poorly in institutions of the highest level, how can we improve?
There’s no denying the growing pains are extremely awkward. We can barely agree on paying workers a livable wage with proper benefits, let alone decide whether or not we really want touch screens as our counter staff.
But to assume that the digital takeover is going to cripple restaurants rather than enable them just means we’re in the training-wheels phase. Hospitality and human touch aren’t going anywhere, we’re just adapting.
I remember when Death & Co./The Ramble Hotel in Denver opened with a bitcoin ATM in the lobby. Sure, perhaps a bit premature, but how far off were they, really? We’re all learning to read the room together, but rest assured, nobody wants to replace real service workers with robots.
Convenience and ease have always been the hallmarks of good hospitality. Perhaps we can streamline things to assign sidework to the robots and pay human staff a good salary for providing great face-to-face service. (What robot can finally roll silverware? I ask the internet, only half-joking.)
In other news…
🥂Cheers to everyone’s favorite bar mom, Alex Jump.
A (late, sorry) follow up to my last report about Alex Jump’s advancement as the US Bar Mentor nominee at this year’s Tales of the Cocktail: she won!
To know her and her work is to love her. A longtime advocate for wellness in the hospitality industry, she’s making the future of hospitality an awesome place. If you don’t follow her projects, start here with FOH.
🔪 I love people who stage out of curiosity.
I read this lovely piece from Your Friend in Food, detailing a night on the line at King. It encapsulates a beautiful feeling that I always wish guests could understand about why people that work in restaurants do what they do, the pressure, complexity and motivation around something as simple as service.
“After about 30 tries and affirming words from my fellow pasta makers, we did it! I got my first perfect piece. I felt so flustered and a little bit embarrassed that I didn’t nail upon immediate learning but that’s the beauty of learning on the line. You shake it off, you work on your imperfections, and you keep going because the pasta needs to be rolled minutes before service begins.”
Worth a read!
🍽️ “Restaurants are a 19th century business model struggling to thrive in the 21st century.”
Another read I thoroughly enjoyed this week was What Restaurants Can Learn from The NY Times, which claimed:
The restaurant business model is ill-suited to the modern economy – it is largely unchanged from its 19th century origins. The wonderful thing about restaurants, their local and in-person nature in a global and digital world, is also their biggest challenge.
We continue to adapt.
🤷🏽♀️How are guests feeling about all of this?
It might be a good time to return for a look at the National Restaurant Association’s State of the Industry report, which came out earlier this year.
I’m intrigued by these takeaways, personally:
Guests agreed that easier ordering experiences were preferable to short wait times. For quick-service restaurants especially, diners ranked ease of ordering (kiosks, display boards, and Pete Well’s favorite touch screens) higher than speed of service.
Delivery apps have a very secure foothold on our dining habits. 53% of guests said they prefer to use technology like third-party delivery in their food-ordering experience, and that 59% of them have used delivery within this last year. (That’s a lot.)
Millennial and Gen-Z diners prefer the use of tech in full-service restaurants (not just quick service spots like Shake Shack). Boomers definitely don’t.
This is the briefest possible touchstone on this topic, but makes for a great reference point when thinking about how we want to move forward, all together, as an industry.
Anyways.
If you’ve made it this far, my goodness, thank you, I hope it made sense. It took me a little too long and a few unnecessary coffees to put a bow on this letter!
I’ll be back later this week with an extra free newsletter on Wednesday diving back into my exploration of delivery driving, particularly in Hoboken/Jersey City’s e-mobile scene. I scored a very interesting interview with one of Hoboken’s most involved delivery drivers, who answered some burning questions on a highly complex subject that I can’t wait to unpack.
If you’re local this week:
Eat some sandwiches at Darke Pines, they’ve literally never looked better
Get some tomatoes at the Hoboken midtown farmers market (!!!)
Drink an iced latte on Lackawana’s perfectly overgrown back patio, it’s perfectly idyllic right now
Cheers!
— ET