In late 2019, the UK hospitality industry was complaining like never before. Rent, no-shows, staff shortages, business rates, Brexit, all threatened to destroy it. We were all two services away from bankruptcy. Then the pandemic happened. Everything changed. So why are we desperate to go back to our old problems?
In the mid 90s, another industry - music - was ticking along nicely when a certain service called Napster arrived. The cash tap had been abruptly turned off. Napster smashed the triangle of balls open, the industry ran around like an exposed rats nest battling and denying it will change, it took people to court and tried to sue individuals for downloading stuff. Now, 20 years on, every single song released is easily available, for free, instantly and legally, with higher quality and convenient platforms paid for with subscription. This would have been simply seen in absolute horror at the time, and impossible. But it wasn’t. The industry has changed completely, the monetisation now comes from different channels.
Similar things have happened over the years. Newspapers, TV, retail, car hire, taxis, all sorts of industries have been agitated or disrupted beyond recognition. The UK seaside resort was almost killed off by the arrival of the package holiday in the 1950s, traditional furniture shops blown away by Habitat and then Ikea flatpack, themselves now at the mercy of a made.com model with cheaper and cheaper imitations of just about anything available instantly from places afar.
Restaurants are not immune to change. We are not a given. We are not an essential service, although we’ve become so bloated and ubiquitous we’ve come to expect restaurants to play a daily and affordable part in our lives. For years, we were an industry of immigrants, conveniently servicing the growing market of leisure and theatre goers and shoppers in large cities. The sideshow to the main event, like food stands at festivals.
Is our restaurant industry even Britain's to claim? We’ve created in our heads some kind of rose-tinted idea of ‘hospitality’ as some sort of 'British' thing. Going to restaurants at every opportunity is supposedly now a British way of life which must be protected at all costs. We’ve tried to adopt the spirit as our own, but instead of the grinning immigrants quietly scratching a living, our home grown efforts are privileged and equity funded and the well-tuned mission statements often come across as patronising and fake. Let's face it, Britain was never historically a nation of hospitality. It’s not in our nature. The subservience and thick skin required to get by as a long-term successful restaurateur doesn't sit well with 'Great Britain'.
We've nicked it from the foreigners. Sorry but it's true. This is perhaps why this Conservative government treats the industry with such apparent indifference. We colonised it, imported it, used it, abused it, redesigned it, grown it out of all proportion, cashed in on it, but we are the creators of our own ogre. It's a flabby, groaning monster of concepts and pastiches which is unsustainable. We’ve got high on our own supply.
This pandemic has whipped the clothes off this industry and revealed some naked truths. Firstly, we’ve been taking all this for granted for way too long. Secondly, there are far too many restaurants (I think some of the problem we have it that they are all so good. Seriously. When was the last time you went to a bad restaurant? It’s impossible. The food, the service, the design is all amazing, even at chain, high street level). And thirdly, human beings are changing their habits.
With the pandemic, many of us have found a good way to stay connected with our customers is via digital with food delivery and everything else. I see this as the Napster moment of our industry. We’ve had it great but now it makes less and less sense to focus on physical locations apart from perhaps for credential. The household in Belgravia, Bradford or Bognor can now order in with the same ease from the greatest restaurants in the land. It’s a great leveller, but also a great isolator. Whereas once you might have been able to secure a customer base by having a great location, this isn’t the great business guarantee it once was.
Local, stay at home, work at home is in my opinion here to stay. People have seen the great change in their habits, and the world hasn’t ended. They might want to leave the house and get on a train, go shopping, go to a restaurant, but they don’t need to. We think it’s carved in stone as a human habit but it’s not. I think we need to stop pining for some kind of invented memory. We also tend to forget that just before the pandemic, the industry was moaning almost non stop about soaring rent, no-shows, employee rights, tipping policies, staff shortages, customer shortages, low corporate spend, Brexit etc. In late 2019, it was supposedly a death wish to open a restaurant.
I am not depressed about this. Maybe surprisingly I am upbeat. I see a bright future, if we are willing to remodel ourselves and adapt to our customers’ new expectations.
Will restaurants become greater digital presences in our lives, as lifestyle brands you attach yourself to, each one a component to your personal brand?
Will restaurant brands (or platforms) morph into something more like TV subscription channels and replace conventional food purchasing habits like local delivery?
Subscribing to your chosen restaurants could be like having accounts with Netflix, Disney and Apple, each delivering streams of physical food/wine and digital presence too, with content and media packed in.
Lots already happens. There are chains supplying the family Friday night pizza, tuning your order every week based on your history, but could you go woke with a platform championing outlying independents with a blue tick from some kind of cultural appropriation watchdog, like an authenticity filter?
Data collection can move to another level for physical business too. Will memberships grow and tune themselves to habits? Will dishes all be pre-ordered, with dietary requirements and menu preferences logged with kitchens automatically through your account? Will the walk-in vanish?
The lines between restaurant and food shop are becoming blurred. Will supermarkets still dominate in 5 years? Will walk-in supermarkets even exist? Will someone create a platform to pick and mix restaurant goods and services within the weekly shop?
Let’s be nimble, let’s be agile. This government clearly doesn’t care about us, it seems our customers do. But they also want us to adapt and service their lives in a 21st century fashion.
One thing is certain, the old model might be there in spirit but it will never be the same.
