UNITED FRONT ON PANDEMIC
Eateries focus on teamwork
In May last year, after the novel coronavirus began reshaping how Ottawa's restaurants would operate, Nara Sok was convinced that running commercial kitchens with no dining rooms attached to them was the new way to go.
This spring, his fledgling business Casper Kitchen has given him lots of reasons to think he was right: more than 210,000, if you assign a reason to every dollar of revenue the York Street enterprise has earned over the last three months. “It's crazy … We've been surprising ourselves,” Sok says, sharing an impressive report on his food sales via the third-party delivery service Uber Eats.
His business partner, David Wen, adds more concretely: “Every quarter we're doubling our business. If we continue this trajectory, within our first year, we might become a million-dollar company.”
That's not bad at all for a business selling to-go Vietnamese food, Korean fried chicken and Southern barbecue fare.
Of course, Wen's proposition is a big one given the incessant uncertainties businesses face during the pandemic. But currently, with locked-down food lovers waiting for dining rooms and patios to open, never mind vaccinations, the optimism at Casper Kitchen is hard to counter.
It's also shared by other Ottawa businesses that host multiple food brands under their roofs. While business models may differ, these new kitchens and eateries are seizing a moment that has been gruelling for other restaurants, but is seemingly in their favour.
Casper Kitchen's name riffs on “ghost kitchen,” the industry term for a stand-alone kitchen focused on takeout and delivery rather than dine-in business. Casper's Viet Fresh brand took its first order in early December. Since then, the brands Banh Mi Bros, which makes Vietnamese sandwiches, Old's BBQ and Fried Chicken for the Seoul have opened.
Wen and Sok say Casper Kitchen owes its success to savvy digital marketing, premium ingredients and packaging and a tireless focus on customer satisfaction.
The future could see more brands added to the Casper Kitchen roster, plus an in-house delivery service and an app, they add.
“It's undecided if we will ever have our own dine-in (service). We don't need it right now,” says Sok, who also owns Tomo, the panAsian restaurant and lounge on Clarence Street.
Wen, whose background is in technology, thinks of Casper Kitchen as more than a money-maker gratifying hungry customers. He calls it an incubator, developing brands that could proliferate elsewhere downtown, be spun off as dine-in restaurants in Ottawa's suburbs or even be sold to a franchising company wanting to take a brand nationwide.
“Every brand has its own identity and growth trajectory,” Wen says. “We have unlimited potential. We're only limited by our creativity.”
In recent months, the Mad Radish restaurant chain has expanded its offerings, following a rationale similar to that of Casper Kitchen.
The flagship Mad Radish in downtown focused on salads when it opened in July 2017. But a push began last summer to sell Mexican food under the Luisa's Burritos & Bowls brand and thin-crust pizzas under the Revival Pizza brand from Mad Radish locations.
“The pandemic forced us to think much more critically about our business,” Mad Radish founder David Segal says. “It made a lot of sense to extend into new product categories.
“We're combining the best elements of a ghost kitchen with the best elements of a restaurant,” Segal continues. “The food's got to be made to order, it's got to be fresh, but it's got to be built to travel.”
Mad Radish's Albert Street location, once the chain's top performer, suffered as Ottawa's downtown emptied, Segal says. But the multi-brand Barrhaven store, which opened in March, is doing well despite the current lockdown.
In Barrhaven, customers can select from all three brands in one order, sharing a Revival pizza and a Mad Radish salad, with a Luisa's burrito on the side, Segal says.
“They like the variety.”
It's a new concept for us to be cooking burgers and tacos at the same time.
In keeping with Segal's suburban strategy, a multi-brand Mad Radish is to open in Kanata next year, and an Orléans store is envisioned. They will still have 20 to 30 seats — “But you don't need 40 to 50,” Segal says — for dine-in customers. “We believe future of restaurants is multi-channel,” Segal says.
This month's opening of Chop Shop in Hintonburg sees an Ottawa-centred example of the thinking that made Mad Radish diversify.
Launched in the space that was the recently shuttered Bar Laurel, Chop Shop will offer the “greatest hits” from the downtown eateries El Camino, Shelby Burger and the yet-to-open pizzeria Giulia, general manager Jana Renaud says.
The restaurants under Chop Shop's banner are commonly owned, and the owners saw an opportunity to expand into a new neighbourhood when Bar Laurel closed, Renaud says.
“It's a new concept for us to be cooking burgers and tacos at the same time, and eventually pizza.”
Currently serving tacos only, Chop Shop will welcome dine-in customers when restrictions relax. Once it's fully operational, it'll be a sort of “micro food hall,” she says.
In the City Centre building, the ghost kitchen called the Kitchen was a pivot by the company Lunch, partner Jordan Lazarovitz says.
After more than a decade of selling grab-and-go lunches from its stores and vending machines, Lunch was “left with zero business” after downtown was deserted, Lazarovitz says. Lunch's City Centre commissary pivoted last fall to become a ghost kitchen, renting space to food businesses. The Kitchen rents by the week and tenants have come and gone.
These days, the 3,000-squarefoot space's tenants include Chef Jae-Anthony Popup, Peruvian kitchen Raphael Express and Filipino food business Lola's Kitchen. Lazarovitz also has Side Piece and Wing Ding.