Area restaurants step up their carryout game
- Scott Daniels: We Ate Well and Cheaply
- April 3, 2020
- 1106
I’ve encouraged you to use this shelter-in-place time to learn some new cooking skills, and while it’s a productive way to use a maddening period of being cooped up and not allowed to go anywhere or see friends, I also want to applaud area restaurants for stepping up their carryout game.
For most, it was a sideline, a way to make a little extra money without too much effort. If we didn’t feel like putting on actual clothes and going out for our favorite Friday night fish and fries, we could call and order some and pick it up. But I can tell you firsthand that having all the restaurants and bars shuttered is having a cascading, disastrous effect on families everywhere.
Food-service workers are often at the low end of the pay scale anyway and, like an awful lot of us, live paycheck to paycheck. The state unemployment website has been completely swamped, and processing times are lengthy and frustrating. Meanwhile, no money at all.
The transition to all-carryout has not been easy for restaurants. If you aren’t prepared for it and have to start from scratch, it amounts to a full retooling of your business model on the fly. Ordering from suppliers, which in a well-run kitchen is a matter of planning and timing and experience, becomes a fumbling in the dark affair. If you’ve never stocked up for an unknowable number of orders, how do you know how many potatoes to buy?
While there are many area eateries who gave carryout a good try, several have scrapped the venture and closed altogether. Let’s all hope they can hold on through this to reopen when we’re set free.
Meanwhile, estimates for many formerly sit-down restaurants is 5-10 percent of normal revenue via carryout. It’s hard to cut staff enough to cover that kind of drop while still offering a viable service.
So to those who are making it happen, hats off and applause. God bless you all.
It’s difficult at times to remember that in 2020 not everyone has a computer or smart device. I don’t know how one would function without such a thing right now, as it provides access to seriously needed information. Still, if you don’t have such a thing, let me suggest you try calling your favorite spots to see if they’re doing carryout and support them if you can.
If you are wired up, groups have been formed on Facebook for many counties including those within Bargain Hunter circulation, sharing which places are feeding us by drive up, and people are posting menus, their favorite dishes and how to order. It’s a way for us to help keep them afloat, and I strongly encourage you to support our friends who need the money to survive. The people who are shuffling your boxed dinner to the car are still front-of-house waitstaff, so remember to tip accordingly.
A friend at a restaurant in Massachusetts told me one of their regular customers started a GoFundMe page for the staff to help them through. I think that’s an excellent idea.
While restaurants are stepping up with carryout service, they’re also taking cleaning to a whole new level. While one may ask why they wouldn’t be hyper about cleaning anyway, the answer is that they are. These are extraordinary times, and they need to keep things operating room clean now. To have a case of COVID-19 originate within their walls would be devastating, so rest assured they’re taking it seriously and scrubbing things down several times a day, if not more often.
We were craving our favorite Mexican dinners last week and were happy to find we could get carryout. I had to go in to pick it up, but there was hand sanitizer everywhere I looked, and others waiting for their orders stayed a solid 10 feet away. The people bringing the food were not touching payments and vice-versa.
As the situation is changing so rapidly, I’m reluctant to name any specific restaurants offering carryout here. Please have a look online. You can find them through Facebook, your map application or Google.
Or, hey man, dust off the telephone book, if you have to, and order some takeout.