Dining at home now even easier
Mix and match from various restaurants simultaneously, writes Vicky Sanderson.
When COVID-19 restricted restaurants from serving us in person and clever establishments found ways to bring their menu into our homes, the line between home cooking and eating out began to blur.
It got even looser as more and more of us started to “cook with our phones” by ordering takeout from favourite neighbourhood joints, says Adam Armeland, who — along with Mat Abramsky — founded a virtual food hall that offers dishes from multiple restaurants from one location, either for neighbourhood delivery or pickup.
“Desire for convenience, quality, the option of mixing and matching to satisfy everyone’s cravings at home now exists everywhere people have phones and order food,” says Armeland. “We make sure doing that is a great experience.”
The Kitchen Hub model allows everyone to order dishes, drinks, and deserts from different restaurants, but deal with one bill and delivery time.
By handling the business end, Kitchen Hub lets chefs for partners like Toronto’s Pai, Piano Piano and Le Dolci Bakery concentrate on making great food that travels well, Armeland says.
It also enables efficiencies in waste collection and ventilation, which Kitchen Hub oversees.
Because the switch from table service to delivery can have challenges, Kitchen Hub tracks feedback so that partners can quickly fix flaws.
Here, Armeland introduces the “pickle story.”
A restaurant had long enjoyed consistently great reviews on a certain sandwich. Then they fell off a cliff. So the whole menu was ordered, and a team from Kitchen Hub sat down and ate it with the owners.
They discovered that the practice had been to take the pickle out of the fridge to raise to room temperature before adding it to the sandwich — a step a new chef did not know.
“So he was taking the cold pickle, putting it on, and wrapping it up,” Armeland said. “By the time the sandwich got to the customer, it was a soggy mess. We were able to fix the process by helping them understand what it meant for the food to travel.”
The first Kitchen Hub opened in 2020. Fifty locations across Canada are planned in the next five years. There will be five this year, including a flagship that opened in Toronto.
The 10,000-square-foot space holds 13 kitchens, and a front of house with pickup/delivery waiting area and retail space. It’s airy, high-ceilinged and well-lit. The kitchen I spied during a tour had a large, light-facing window and a healthy plant hanging above it.
“The environment is pro chef,” says Armeland. “We have had chefs where the brand left but the chef stayed because they really wanted to work here.”
(For my experience of ordering a family meal from Kitchen Hub, go to aroundthehouse.ca.)
Another home-related model so hot that it’s a featured topic at Restaurants Canada hybrid trade show (rcshow.com) is for local restaurants to extend their reach by selling specialty menu items, condiments and cocktails for home use, on site and online.
An example is multiplatform Marben, the Toronto restaurant that’s operated on a farm-totable basis for about 15 years. From a sit-down space, chef Chris Locke creates an exceptional menu that favours locally sourced, seasonal ingredients.
He’s also a master at using fermentation and preservation to create amazing, complex flavours while reducing waste.
Marben-made frozen meals (including fabulous sausage rolls and savoury pies) and kits for items like chili, cookies and burgers are available through an online market, as are honey, fresh eggs and condiments.
Both Marben and Kitchen Hub appear rooted in the movement toward supporting local business.
“We want to do something unique for the neighbourhood, to be an amenity to that 15-minute community we belong to,” says Armeland.