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Old Burdick's Bar and Grill in Kalamazoo is among the many restaurants to create new outdoor seating options to keep guests safe.

Eating in an igloo suddenly doesn’t seem so novel. With indoor dining limited or shut down entirely at times, the pandemic has pushed the traditional boundaries of the restaurant industry.

"The food world has had to adapt to cope, whether it’s the ‘new normal’ or this is just what it is now. We’ve seen some really creative approaches,” says John Schmitt, former restaurateur, alumnus and senior business consultant for the Michigan Small Business Development Center, hosted at Haworth College of Business. “Restaurants have done their best to be agile and resilient as they face circumstances they never could have planned for.”

In the year since restaurants have been able to operate “normally,” a roller coaster of restrictions left the industry scrambling for recipes to cook up opportunities for cash flow. During Michigan's milder seasons, outdoor dining proved a palatable pivot. Restaurants expanded patio space and cut costs by reducing staff. Some businesses tailor-made for delivery and carryout seemingly carried on without skipping a beat—even seeing an influx in business. Others, however, would have to reimagine their operations to stay afloat.

“Presidential Brewing (in Portage, Michigan) celebrated its one-year anniversary in February 2020. They didn't have a canning line, so the owner shifted their business model when they discovered they could deliver beer under COVID-19 rules enacted by the Michigan Liquor Control Commission,” Schmitt says. “They started offering the service and gradually grew their customer base by offering the convenience of delivered beer.”

Some restaurants chose to remain shut down even as restrictions were eased, unable to cover costs on the fraction of sales that smaller capacity would yield. Others ditched brick-and-mortar operations for “ghost kitchens”—mobile units with space to prepare to-go meals without the added costs of rent, utilities and large staffs. Another trend Schmitt noticed is establishments creating new experiences for customers to drum up business, especially in downtown areas that depend on foot traffic from people checking out events, which have mostly moved to virtual spaces.

“(Last summer) I was walking around downtown Kalamazoo, feeling a little melancholy. There were no cars on Michigan Avenue—it was like a ghost town. Then I start hearing Motown music. As I'm walking down Michigan, coming close to Bimbo's Pizza, I see they've put in a new door with a window and put a pizza rack out on the sidewalk. They put loudspeakers out there playing music and they'd call your name when your order was ready,” recalls Schmitt. “People were socially distanced, either in their car or on the sidewalk, and for the first time in months, I saw a couple people breaking down dancing. That was an example of a business that used what they had and figured out how to best make it work, and that was successful.”

Fine dining floundered for the simple fact that the food typically doesn't travel well. Establishments able to stay afloat explored concepts like reservation-only dining where customers pre-order meals, allowing for expedited service and more table turns. Meal kits have also become popular, giving customers the opportunity to pick up ready-made meals they cook themselves at home. Schmitt expects both of these concepts to pick up steam over the next several months.

“The trends we've seen in the restaurant industry come down to convenience,” he says, pointing out the pandemic exacerbated trends already emerging among younger diners who crave shorter restaurant visits and dining on demand. More delivery options and specially crafted to-go menus are likely to become permanent staples of restaurant strategy post-pandemic.

A number of non-traditional tools were also employed at the start of the pandemic to help prop up the industry, from grassroots social media efforts to buy local to the creation of Feed the Fight Kalamazoo, a volunteer organization co-founded by Dr. Sally Hadden, associate professor of history, that buys meals from local restaurants and delivers them free of charge to front-line workers.

No matter the effort, the unfortunate truth is some restaurants will not survive the multiple blows dealt by the pandemic.

“The playing field is going to be cut down. My gut tells me it's going to be more like a quarter to a third of restaurants will either have to change ownership or shut down,” says Schmitt. The shrinking number of options, however, will provide opportunities for those left standing to increase their customer base and income.

Through all the anxiety and uncertainty, a silver lining has emerged: It's brought communities and the industry together like never before.

“In my more than 30 years of experience in the food business, I haven't seen this level of teamwork between distributors, janitorial services, marketing companies, point-of-sales companies and other competitors before.”

The pandemic has reinforced how integral restaurants are to communities—both in terms of economic impact and quality of life.

“My rose-colored glasses want me to believe that there is something about the shared experience. And as a former restaurant owner, having that shared experience of breaking bread with other people is an aspect of our society that I do think there's a basic desire for,” says Schmitt. ■