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How our restaurants became online grocery stores Devika Desai

From chains to local eateries, Canadian restaurants have turned to selling groceries and staple items to stay afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic.

On top of offering take- out and deliveries for their prepared items, many restaurants have begun offering basic online grocery menus and meal kits in order to supplement their income and cater to the overwhelming demand from quarantined customers.

“It’s a different dynamic than what we were doing previously,” said Guy Rawlings, who co- owns Toronto’s Montgomery’s restaurant with his wife.

While adjusting to the pandemic has been “stressful,” Rawlings said, many restaurant owners are delighted to be able to provide opportunities to groups badly impacted by the lockdown — restaurant staff, customers and local farmers.

Services offered

Rawlings offers his customers a weekly food box, replete with basic produce, a prepared food item, specialty products and the option to choose items from an exhaustive grocery and beverage list. “And then also something a little bit more adventurous,” he added — a new vegetable or an unusual ingredient with tips on how to use it.

The restaurant also offers staple items like toilet paper, candles, nitrile gloves and parchment paper. “Basically, we created a list of everything we would want at our house,” Rawlings said.

The process through which customers receive their groceries is an entirely contactless one. Every week, customers on a mailing list (which they join by emailing the restaurant) are sent a weekly newsletter of items that are arriving in the next week. Once the customers place the order, a box is put together and made available either for delivery or curb- side pickup the following week.

Rawlings wouldn’t elaborate on the number of orders he receives per week, but said that the quick adjustment to a new business model, and the ensuing customer demand, has kept the restaurant busy. “We’re not a high-volume restaurant,” he said. But now “we’ve moved to a format where we’re serving more families and giving them a week’s worth of food at a time.”

Chris Graves, who owns the King’s Head Pub in Winnipeg, said that since mid- March, his restaurant has transformed into a production line to accommodate his customers’ demand.

“We buy all the products in bulk from our suppliers — carrots in 50- pound boxes for example,” he said. And then “we put together premade boxes for our customers, like a hamper, all priced together, and customers have the option of a curbside pick up or next-day delivery.”

Items included in the box can vary from week to week, depending on what the restaurant can buy from a supplier. However, Graves said they make sure to consistently include essentials — lettuce, fruit, eggs, dairy products — for their customers.

The demand for these boxes is huge — anywhere from 30 to 50 orders a day. “We’re so busy right now that we wouldn’t be able to entertain or do prepared food,” Graves said.

Janna Bishop, who co-owns Vancouver bakery and cafe Flourist, said she has been taking between 150 and 200 orders a day since March 16. The cafe takes orders for individual items — local produce, in- house pantry products, dairy and prepared foods — between 9 a. m. and 3 p. m., and has them ready for curbside pickups and deliveries the next day. “We only make and pack what we’ve sold, so there’s no waste,” said Bishop.

The transition has been fairly mild, she said, but the number of orders means that many of their items sell out on the same day. “Flour runs out in 10 minutes,” she said. “Eggs, greens, potatoes sell out every single day.”

Food supply chain

The switch from eatery to online grocery store has, for some restaurants, meant creating new relationships with suppliers and turning to local farms for help.

“We’re starting to do some more work with local farmers,” said Graves, which he says not only helps the restaurant but also suppliers who won’t be able to sell at the farmers’ markets this year. “They have a lot of product to sell to those markets, but those aren’t even existing now, so we help them pull that through here.”

Bishop said she sends “mostly whatever we can find locally — potatoes, chard, onion, cabbage” but has had to add more suppliers to accommodate the growing demand. “We had to find a second farm for eggs,” she said, “since chickens can only do as much as they can do.”

As per customer request, Bishop has also turned to wholesale suppliers for “basic items that people don’t want to go to the store for,” she said.

The rest, she said, involves simply ordering “different things from the suppliers.”

“Just yesterday we put nettles on our online menu from a farmer who normally supplies us with flowers,” she said. “It’s an interesting way to give people access to products they might not think about in different times, along with recipes for ideas.”

Rawlings, whose restaurant has always depended on local suppliers for ingredients, agrees. He’s utilized the new business format to “give people new access to ( foods) they’ve had for decades.” The idea of a weekly food box, he said, was something he had been pushing around a while, as an example of community-supported agriculture.

“We’re just connecting with the farmers that raise and produce these ingredients, and organize them for folks,” he said.

Impact on businesses

The high demand, Graves said, has been a boon in terms of keeping his restaurant open and almost half of his regular staff employed.

“I’ve been able to keep about 12 to 15 staff ( out of 35) going full time,” he said. “And we’ve developed new customers through this as well, which is interesting.”

However, Graves said he plans to return to his original business once things return to normal. “I can’t wait to get back to serving pints again,” he said.

Bishop, who closed her bakery’s doors before the province shut down non- essential services, said the new business model has been key to keeping her and her staff financially afloat.

“I have most of my staff still working,” she said. “We’re at full capacity.” The option to deliver, she said, allows people who don’t visit her store to have access to it on a daily basis. This, in turn, earns her new customers.

Bishop said she’s open to keeping the format going once the worst of the pandemic has passed. “It still remains to be seen,” she said, explaining that should she decide to continue deliveries, the bakery would need to make adjustments to accommodate for time and space.

“I think people do want to shop differently and use restaurants differently and (the pandemic) might force people to look at that,” she said.

Rawlings said he plans to continue the food- box delivery once things return to normal. “That’s another challenge for us, launching something that’s not part time,” he said. But “we don’t want to just do something for a couple of months.”

Restaurant chains

Several major chains — Earl’s, JOEY, Local Public Eatery — have also launched programs selling and delivering groceries and other items to customers to help with pandemic demand.

“Seeing that lines at grocery stores and markets were so long, and ( watching) people putting themselves at risk with that, we thought it would be an opportunity to help out in the community,” said Adam Vanderboon, director of culinary operations for the Local Public Eatery.

The chain, which has locations across Canada and one in the U. S., has been offering groceries for over a month. Figuring out suppliers, as well as prep schedules and determining what foods can be procured were all part of the first steps to organizing the new ventures, he said.

Now, the chain offers liquor options as well as an online grocery, along with a prepared-food menu. Once ordered, customers can opt for curb-side pickups or deliveries through Doordash. “You’d have it in 20 to 30 minutes,” Vanderboon said.

Earl’s Kitchen and Bar, with over 60 locations in the U. S. and Canada, offers customers Chef Kits, home essentials, a grocery list, grocery packs and liquor options. “We know of guests who regularly dine in our restaurants struggling to find ingredients on shelves and others who wish to stay home to limit their social interactions,” said Kristin Vekteris, chief brand officer, in a release. “We also recognize our responsibility to keep our supply chains moving and our people employed.”

Vanderboon said Local Public Eatery will run its initiative for as long as the pandemic continues. After that, he is uncertain of whether they’d want to continue the business.

“If it’s going to help in the future, I’m sure we’d look at it,” he said. “But really, time will tell with that one.”