Creatives in Food

There is an entrepreneurial spirit is in all of us. How many times have you heard people around the table say “I have a great idea”? Ideas, as we know, are a dime a dozen, the ones that execute on those ideas are in a class all by themselves.

The shifts coming out of the restaurant world are impressive. We should all be excited. These are people who love their profession, their career of choice, their passion for food, and their love of hospitality. They aren’t leaving their livelihood, they are just taking a new fork in the road because they have no choice.

Albert Einstein was credited for the saying “The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect different results” although he actually did not say it. It is the perfect saying for where we are today.

I hope that someone is documenting the fast-moving shifts taking place in the food industry. Restaurants are becoming grocery stores, take-away, wine stores with food (unfortunately not in NYC), and overall just moving their businesses in completely different directions. How they came up with it, how they shifted, how they moved their money around, how they had to fire people, negotiate their rent, rethink their overall strategy so quickly is not easy especially coupled with the anxiety of Covid-19.

Restaurants aren’t over they are just reinventing. It will take time to catch up. Running a restaurant at 50% capacity does not work. Rents are too high and the lease structures need to be rethought so communities and cities benefit. It will take time to see how it all shakes out but the ones with the entrepreneurial spirits that have just dove in to make these changes are getting huge applause from me.

At one point we will have tests with the hope we can walk into a restaurant after spitting into a cup and sit down in a group of strangers and dine but for now, the only way to stay alive is to think out of the box. I hope that these ideas stay around and become part of restaurant business models that more than likely will be in flux over the next 18 months.