Fresh Take
The latest from the restaurant biz
In this edition of our weekly insights into restaurant industry, we look at Eater New York’s roundup of new restaurants in the Big Apple, and Ron Ruggles’ prudent insight on the delicate balance that operator’s are hoping to strike amid staffing challenges and the increased expectations of their freshly-returned patrons. USA Today presents a positive update from the Labor Department , and we also eagerly anticipate the Association’s upcoming webinar — Fast Casual Industry Council: Women Leaders on Pandemic Lessons Learned & Post-Pandemic Plans.
Let’s dig in…
New Kids on The Block
Eater NY’s running list of the restaurants and bars that opened in June featured some interesting additions this past week:
Harlem: Aliyyah Baylor, the third-generation baker behind Make My Cake, opens a third location of her Harlem cakeshop this week. In addition to its usual menu of baked goods, the new bakery is making sweet potato cheesecake, peach cobbler, and a Southern potato doughnut inspired by the now-closed Georgie’s Donuts on West 125th Street. Baylor opened the first location of Make My Cake in 1995 with her mother Joann Baylor. The pair currently operates two bakeries in Manhattan, the original at 2380 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard in Harlem and another that came later at 775 Columbus Avenue on the Upper West Side. The latest bakeshop is located next door to I Like It Black, a neighborhood coffee shop and cafe from the same team. 409 West 125 Street, at Morningside Avenue
Other noteworthy openings included Miso Sushi in the East Village, a new Bushwick location for The Ten Bells — a pioneer of natural wines, Anything At All (named after a line in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby) at Roosevelt Island, and Old John’s Diner (formerly Old John’s Luncheonette) reopening backed by restaurateur Louis Skibar, on the Upper West Side.
View the whole list, here.
Ruggles’ Consumer Trend Analysis
The Senior Editor of Nation’s Restaurant News penned an article titled Prickly Pandemic Consumers Emerge Into Restaurants. Typically insightful, the piece details the conflict occurring due to consumers’ pent-up demands and heightened expectations as they return to eateries, and the subsequent bad behavior and protocol confusion nationwide.
“Pent-up demand Is high and expectations are high, so clearly there’s tension,” said Lisa W. Miller, a Dallas-based consumer market strategist, who has been tracking consumer sentiment since the pandemic was declared in March 2020 and framing it as the “journey back to joy.”
Mille’s firm found in a survey earlier in June that 70% of U.S. respondents agreed or strongly agreed that frontline employees/servers need to be treated better by customers and that too much bad customer behavior happening.
Read the full piece, which also highlights several individual instances to substantiate the analysis, here.
Happy Hour Is Back
“Of the 559,000 jobs added to the U.S. economy in May, 186,000 were at restaurants and drinking establishments, according to the Labor Department” reads the sub-head of USA Today’s latest report on the subject. Great news for our industry, which remains the hardest hit, the article goes on to detail that 292,000 of May’s new jobs — more than half of the month’s gains — stemmed from areas such as restaurants and hotels, spectator sports, and amusements and gambling — where total jobs grew by more than 4%.
One-third of the 559,000 jobs gained in May happened at restaurants and bars (186,000 jobs), according to the Labor Department. That’s an encouraging sign for workers in the leisure and hospitality industry, which still represents about one-third of the job losses since March 2020.
Women Leaders on Pandemic Lessons Learned & Post-Pandemic Plans
The National Restaurant Association’s latest webinar will see Emily Williams Knight and a panel of industry professionals convene on June 30 to share how their teams handled the unexpected challenges caused by COVID-19 and the lessons they learned in and hour-long panel discussion.
Don’t miss out, register here!
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