Turning upscale eateries into takeout joints
High-end restaurants jostle for share of food-delivery market
Over the course of a weekend, Le Phénix owner Jacob Wharton- Shukster turned his French restaurant in Parkdale into a takeout spot.
The extra time customers need to get home has meant paring down Wharton-Shukster’s old dine-in menu — reduction sauces, for example, tend to congeal as they cool, he notes. But dishes still on offer include fresh oysters, steak tartare and a confit duck leg and smoked breast with braised cabbage and pickled apple, and he added a roasted half-chicken because it retains heat well.
“We’re getting our systems in place, our food has been adapted for travel, and I think a lot of people who had special occasions planned are happy that they can order our food,” he says. “I really feel people deserve to have some semblance of normalcy and this brings some of it back.”
The city’s finer dining establishments don’t usually offer takeout, or delivery, but in an effort to stay in business and keep staff employed during the COVID-19 forced closure of eat-in restaurants, many are getting onside. However, creating a takeout clientele from scratch is not easy.
Wharton-Shukster says it’s a completely different business model with different costs, operations, staffing and menu planning. To do that within days is a big undertaking.
He was already planning to turn his small restaurant into a takeout spot in the days before Toronto announced it was closing down eat-in restaurants. He had seen cities in Europe already announce restaurant closures and he anticipated the same would happen here.
“Hopefully, we’ll be able to expand to lunch service and give people more to do … The goal is to get everyone back to work and make sure there is a place for them to go back to,” says Wharton-Shukster.
The funny thing, he says, was that Le Phénix opened in January as a six-month pop-up to keep the staff employed while his other restaurant, Chantecler, was being rebuilt after a fire in November. “I’m running a pop-up delivery business in another pop-up.”
Other high-end Toronto restaurants surprising diners with takeout and delivery include Aloette, the offshoot of Alo; Japanese tasting-menu restaurants Sushi Kaji, Miku and Shoushin; and Italian spots Bar Buca and Il Covo. For Wharton-Shukster, it meant changes like signing the restaurant up with Uber Eats and reassigning his bartender to take phone orders.
Meanwhile, his butcher shop across the street, Chantecler Boucherie, has experienced an uptick in business as more people cook at home. WhartonShukster has been making noncontact deliveries for the shop every day.
It’s an uphill battle, but help came this week when the province recently let restaurants sell alcohol along with takeout orders — a move that follows similar measures already taken in California and British Columbia. At Le Phénix, alcohol makes up 40 per cent of sales.
Larger restaurants known for nightlife and celebrity sightings are also becoming unexpected sources of affordable meals to-go now.
“We laid off over 2,000 people in the last four to five days,” says Charles Khabouth CEO of Iconink hospitality and entertainment group, which includes more than 20 properties including concert venues, hotels, clubs and upscale restaurants.
“Never have I seen anything this bad in my life,” he said. “It’s total devastation for every industry.”
Khabouth is particularly optimistic about the $82-billion relief plan announced by the federal government — “I’m hoping the government aid kicks in soon, it would make a huge difference,” he says. “Deferring rent or taxes isn’t going to help much because racking up two, three months of taxes makes things worse.”
So for now Khabouth’s company, too, has entered the takeout and delivery game. Three restaurants in the Entertainment District: Weslodge, Figo, and café French Made, are offering takeout. The latter also has an under-$20 menu of sushi rolls, Japanese-influenced pizzas and Wagyu beef fried rice from the fine-dining Japanese restaurant Akira Back, which Iconink co-owns with the Michelin-starred chef of the same name. (Akira Back’s regular menu included a $90 tasting menu and bottles of sake costing upwards of $500.)
“Takeout is never going to be the answer, but these restaurants were neighbourhood restaurants and I wanted to keep even a few chefs employed,” says Khabouth. “Now, we’re having our senior chef making sandwiches, pizza and rolling sushi, but that’s better than nothing.
“It’s been slow at the start because people are hunkered down and have bought so much food,” he says. “We hope a week or two from now, people will start going out for a bit just to get food.”
The challenge is getting customers to rethink his restaurants, from considering them gathering places for special occasions to takeout places with grab-and-go meals.
“Places that were always doing takeout are doing well, but if you never did takeout before, then people aren’t used to coming to you,” he says. “But we’re giving this a try and I hope it works out so at least we can keep a few people working. Other than that, it’s about being able to give people some nice meals.”
Montecito, the 12,000-squarefoot California-cuisine restaurant co-owned by director Ivan Reitman, is also finding the pivot challenging. A celebrity hot spot during the Toronto International Film Festival, it’s now offering bites on Uber Eats and Foodora — kale salad, roast chicken and flatbreads are popular dishes.
“The motivation is not making money at this point, it’s to help as many people as we can with the skeleton staff we still have,” says partner Tom Bitove. “We’re not a takeout restaurant, but we had to adapt. We tried to focus on product that will travel well and hold temperatures, so we have a dramatically limited menu, about six or seven items down from 40.”
“People still have to eat and celebrate life, even if it is within the confines of their homes. Food is one of the things that give people hope. It’s cheesy but it’s true,” says Wharton-Shukster. “This is what we do, and we just have to do for as long as we can.”