To Reopen, Restaurants Are Doubling Down on Becoming Grocery Stores
The deli display taking up about 1/5th of the restaurant space, now make up 50%-60% of business at Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria.
(Bloomberg) -- As restaurants across the country plan their reopenings, most are looking at a future of thermal cameras, plexiglass separators, and designer masks.
But at least one major New York restaurant sees the past as the way forward.
Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria is bringing back their beloved chef Justin Smillie to take over the kitchen and oversee its market. Smilie is leaving Upland, Stephen Starr’s Cal-Italian dining room in Manhattan’s Flatiron District to take the job. His return to a neighborhood restaurant reflects the sense of uncertainty that hangs over destination dining rooms that depended on business expense accounts and tourism.
At Alimentari, Smillie isn’t looking to reinvent the menu, as many chefs do when they take over a kitchen. Instead, he’ll continue to serve the spit-roasted, peppercorn-rubbed short ribs and bucatini cacio e pepe that put the place on the map, focusing his time with owner Donna Lennard on expanding the market at the restaurant’s entrance that most people ignored.
“More than the idea that we’re going to revolutionize the menu, we’re trying to rebuild our business and see what it can look like,” says Lennard. She and Smillie are enhancing the meat section, for instance, adding what they call “a concierge butcher” for specific cuts, as well as options such as porchetta, shoulder roll roast, and fresh sausages.
The deli display and shelves take up about one-fifth of the restaurant space; prior to the pandemic, these accounted for only 10% to 15% of sales, says Lennard. Market sales now make up 50% to 60% of business at the restaurant, which reopened a week ago. “And then, if it settles at 25 to 30% of our business, that will be amazing,” she says.
Shopping for Dairy Cases
Il Buco has a built-in grocery store to take advantage of. But the hybrid restaurant-grocery store (and wine and liquor, too) has become such a viable model for struggling places that several are planning to keep it going, even when restrictions start lifting. In Red Hook, Brooklyn, the popular bar and café Fort Defiance has transitioned to Fort Defiance General Store and that move could be permanent.
“I have a bad feeling about operating as a full service bar and restaurant again,” says owner St. John Frizell.
He now stocks 150 items for pickup, including pork chili that was key to a huevos rancheros entrée, as well as honey from Lancaster, Pa., and gelato made down the street. Frizell is also investing in grocery store equipment: He’s shopping for a $6,000 chicken rotisserie and $3,000 dairy cases.
“I’m making a new floor plan, and then I’m going to hit the restaurant auctions. Unfortunately, there will be lots of those,” he says. Frizell plans to have just one or two tables inside—the space used to seat 42 people—along with outdoor seating, a hot topic in the city at the moment.
“It will be a weird place where you can get a daiquiri and a tin of sardines at the same time, but the neighborhood has been coming,” he says.
Repurposing Private Dining Rooms
In Park Slope, also in Brooklyn, Olmsted chef and owner Greg Baxtrom has turned his private dining room into the Olmsted Trading Post. He now stocks around 120 items, including several he served at his restaurant, such as house-cured lox and breads and cookies from his pastry chef Alex Grunert (the sourdough sauerkraut loaves sell out fast), in addition to such new stay-at-home novelties as mushroom-growing kits.
“There’s no end in sight to reopen,” says Baxtrom. “I don’t see Olmsted back this year, or Maison Yaki [his Japanese skewer restaurant]. And I don’t think anyone is going to be looking for a private dining room anytime soon.”
If they are, he says, he will consider expanding his market or bakery to another nearby storefront; he fears more will become available in the near future. Still, he says, it’s no small thing to manage these places: “Chefs like weird new challenges. But this is a lot. It’s not just the cooking, getting the product—you run out of containers for your hot sauce. Running a general store is exhausting.”
Demand for French Butter
In Chicago, Café Cancale Marche is a just-opened neighborhood French market that’s taken over the dining room at Café Cancale in Chicago’s Wicker Park. As of Wednesday, the place offers seafood such as shrimp, halibut, and oyster-shucking kits; such pantry items as rose vinegar, canned tuna, and truffled Dijon mustard; and martini kits from its sister bar, the Violet Hour.
“Café Cancale is easily adaptable to this model because so much of what we already present can be a la carte. People always ask us about our spices, salts, sauces,” says Paul Kahan, chef and partner of One Off Hospitality. “We use a lot of cool ingredients not readily available to consumers, such as Coquelicot spice from La Boîte, and Beillevaire Butter from Brittany. The market allows us to get to that next logical step of offering ready-to-pick-up product to the public.”
A Dedicated Instagram Account
San Francisco coffee chain Sightglass opened up its first Los Angeles location, a 12,000-square-foot roastery and cafe, on March 14, promptly faced a mandated shutdown, and then reopened as Sightglass Provisions at the end of April. Culinary director Brett Cooper oversees inventory such as artichokes from local farmers, brined chickens, poultry, and vegetable stock, and bagels and cinnamon rolls from pastry chef Jillian Bartolome.
The chain plans to continue with the market model, even after it returns to serving dine-in guests. Its commitment extends to creating a dedicated Instagram account to the place.
“We’ve been really happy to offer produce to people that has literally just been harvested,” says Cooper. “It’s especially important to connect people with the small, local places we work with who need our help.”
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