What Do Restaurants Look Like After COVID?

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How have restaurants managed their way through COVID-19, and what does their future look like after the pandemic? And when does that happen? Those were questions on the table during a recent Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce virtual Online Office Hours roundtable with restaurateurs.

Moderator was Carlo Capua, co-founder of the Locavore rent-by-the-hour kitchens in Fort Worth and owner of Z’s Café, which he closed in 2020 after 13 years. Panelists were Donald Burns, a longtime restaurateur, author, and owner of the Restaurant Coach consultancy; Vicki Cisneros, president of Los Vaqueros restaurants in Fort Worth; and Jon Bonnell, of Bonnell’s Restaurant Group in Fort Worth, owner of Bonnell’s Fine Texas Cuisine, Waters Restaurant, and Buffalo Bros Pizza, Wings & Subs. This is a transcript of the panel conversation, lightly edited for brevity:

Capua: How are you training your staff in these new (COVID) protocols?

Bonnell: “The protocols are not that hard to follow, but you’ve got to put them up and show the staff. This is where it always comes down to trouble: You have to enforce it with guests. When a guest comes in and says ‘I’m not going to wear a mask and let me tell you why,’ we just have to have a very simple policy. Wear a mask, come on in, you can take it off when you sit down, but otherwise, you can’t eat here (without a mask). It’s caused some controversy. People go online and give you a one-star rating and say you’re discriminating against people who don’t want to wear masks.”

Cisneros: “Doing what we need to do is the easy part. At our TCU location, we didn’t have an issue (with guests). At our Weatherford location and our Fort Worth location, we did have some challenges with customers who did not want to wear masks, which puts our employees at risk. So we took a hard line on that. As you all know, Stockyards people come in, they’re wanting to have a good time. Thinking outside of the box…we actually install people (who act) as patrols in a very nice and funny way. We had a guy who wore a T shirt, and he was the social distance patrol. I think people can be comfortable restaurants are doing everything we can to make sure our guests are safe and our employees are safe. The challenges are the customers who don’t want to follow the mandates. I think we’re seeing some changes. Wouldn’t you agree, Jon, it has gotten a little bit better? At least, it has for us.”

Bonnell: “Overall, it does seem to be getting better. But the passion of those who just really think that they’re right doesn’t seem to be going away. If it’s one in 100, that’s a lot of people who come in and ruin your day. We have to take those negative examples and put them out there (on social media), just to help drive business. It just helps put a better face on what restaurants are having to cope with right now. I kind of like putting it out there so that other restaurants know they’re not alone.”

Capua: “Remember that old adage the customer is always right? Well, we’ve learned the customer is not always right. What ‘s the mistake that restaurants are making right now in a post-COVID world?”

Burns: “You have to stand your ground and back up whatever you implement. The biggest thing you can do as an independent restaurant is to blast social media about why you’re different. So, do videos of the new protocols you’re using, show people still having a great time in your restaurants, show your team wearing a mask, show your team using sanitation, show your team going above and beyond to try to accommodate people as best as possible. But then also stand by your guns and say if you come to our restaurant, you will be asked to wear a mask. Show the core values that you live, show the mandates that you’re enforcing, and then work with your team. 

“Don’t train people ‘til they get it right. You train your team until they can’t get it wrong. And how do you do that? Do role playing. You got an angry guy coming in the front door, and he refuses to wear a mask. What do you do? Go. And then have some role play where you put them in that situation, and they start understanding don’t aggravate them, how do I talk them down, how do I explain our positioning. If we don’t train our team how to deal with jerks, they usually handle it poorly. Role playing is probably one of the most underappreciated tools in the world. You have to defend your business. Make sure you go out of your way to defend your reputation.”

Capua: “What kinds of efforts have worked well on social media?”

Cisneros: “We’ve been doing Facebook Live. People want to see what you’re doing. They want to see the protocols, they want to see you can still have fun. I’ve done a couple of appeals to my customers. We tried to pivot and find new ways to do business. We started doing the popups, showing your team going out and taking food into the neighborhoods. That went over pretty well. (We do video in the kitchen), letting people see my girls making the salsa. (I asked one) why is your salsa so great? And, she said, senora, I pray over it every day. That got posted on social media, and it had so many likes and so much engagement.”

Capua: “How have you used social media. To Jon, that’s sort of like a fish-in-a-barrel question. You’re all over the place. How have you used social media, for the one person living under a rock.?”

Bonnell: “What we’ve been doing is putting a still photo every single day (of what we’re selling that day) on the curbside. Make it funny, make it cool, but it’s got to be high-def really good imagery. What I find is a lot of people the wake up, and their standard morning routine is check the news, check the email, and they start scrolling. So by 6:30, I’ve got something that’s quick, that’s easy (on Facebook). We have done it every single day since March. Somehow, they keep lining up. The staff says ‘when are we going to be done with this?’ As long as they’re lining up, I’ll do it every day. It’s feeding as many as we can for the least possible price, and still making a small profit out of it. it’s kind of half community service, and half keeping the catering team still working, since we’re obviously not catering a lot of weddings and big parties right now. It’s a contact-free way to get a meal at $10 a head.

“When it’s our days off, I feel that’s when we can turn it around and help support other people. We post somebody else’s (meal offer). That seems like a really easy and free community service. We’ve compiled a list of 200 community restaurants. That’s the kind of stuff that endears your customers. Domino’s isn’t going anywhere, Chick fil-A is going to be fine, the independents, we need to be on the same page.”

Burns: “Let me tell you the secret to social media. It’s about being social. Not much of a secret. Most of the time we go out on social media, we tend to talk about ourselves. There’s a rule out there in business called the Pareto Principle, the 80-20 law (that argues that 80% of results come chiefly from 20% of inputs). If you go out there on social media, 80% should be about other people, 20% should be about yourself. If you do that, you will dominate the social media market in your neighborhood.

What we’ve been doing with our (Restaurant Coach) Masterminds (peer) group is don’t focus on vanity metrics. What you should be focusing on is profitability. We have restaurants now that are doing 25-50% less volume, but they’re 10-12% more profitable. I’d rather have a restaurant doing a million and being 15% profitable and one doing 2.2 and only having 3% profits.”

Capua: “When people leave a bad review online, what are some best practices in handling?”

Cisneros: “I typically will try to reach out to that person. Sometimes I point blank ask them why, how did this happen, and I listen to what they have to say to me. I listen, and then we talk…And sometimes I say I’m terribly sorry, give my team some grace right now. (And if she can’t arrange a conversation), I think a handwritten note is a great way to say sorry things didn’t work for you this time, give our team some grace right now, come back and see us when COVID is over.”

Capua: “Jon, tell us how you engage with negatively online.”

Bonnell: “We usually take one or two approaches. Usually, when somebody gives one or three stars and say ‘my steak is overcooked, the server wasn’t very attentive,’ my approach is you’re going to own it. You’re being to be straightforward and say you’re right, we charge a premium, and if you are not completely happy, then we need to do better. Sometimes that type of honesty goes a long way. I’ve seen people take the review down. In the extreme case that the customer themselves needs to be reviewed (he cited the recent example of a customer who blasted Bonnell on social media after refusing to wear a mask), I say those are the times it’s time to lean into it and knock one out of the park (on social media). You better be right for the very few you choose to do that for, but you can turn into a negative into the biggest positive ever.”

Burns: “Did you know that 50 % of negative reviews are written while they’re in your restaurant? This is where it’s very important to work with their team to read their body language. You can tell when someone’s not having a good time. You have to team to be problem seekers. If someone says they had a bad time, oh my god, thank you for the opportunity. The biggest thing you want to do is take it offline and also just admit you did not have the experience you did want to have. We would love to have the opportunity to make it right. The last thing you want to see is people airing your dirty laundry online or getting into an argument with an internet troll. You can’t argue with what medium-rare is to a guest.”

Bonnell: “The worst thing a server can tell you in a kitchen is they said they wanted this medium-rare. Well, do they want it cooked a little more or a little less? Find out for sure. Always attack it as how do we make this person absolute as happy as they can be before they get out the door. That’s the key.”

Capua: Do you think we’ll go back to normal. What does normal look like, and what’s your outlook for the future of the food business?

Bonnell: “I think when we see normal, there’s two different factors at play, and they both have to intersect for us to call this normal. On one side, you have all the regulations lifted. On the other side, you have to have the public ready and feeling safe and confident to go back and act like they used to. I think the regulations are probably headed towards lifting, I would guess, late May, early June. I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t have any inside knowledge.

“Once you get everybody a vaccine that wants a vaccine, there’s going to be a point where everybody says okay, we’ve done as much as we can. I think that’s probably several months from now, but we’ll get there. On the Buffalo Bros side, everybody’s ready to pack the place tomorrow if we let them.

“On the fine dining side, Bonnell’s and Waters, it’s going to take longer. There are people that are still going to wear a mask years from now. I think the new model for the future needs to incorporate all of the possible conveniences like ordering on apps and being able to pick up grab-and-go. All of those things are going to be seeing for a really long time. The lower end, the lower price point stuff is going to come flying back as soon as possible. The higher end stuff full service and being able to pack into a bar is going to take more time, because you’re dealing with a client that is still more vulnerable even as we move past this.”

Capua: “Vicki, are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of the food industry?”

Cisneros: “I am extremely optimistic. I feel absence makes the heart grow fonder. I think people are going to look forward to going out to dinner. I think travel is going to come a little later; people are just going to be happy to get out of the house.

“We already see a lot of things turning around. We see a lot of things being booked for the fall. We’re booking a lot of holiday parties. That could be the optimism of the community, but I do feel we’re going to be okay. I feel it’s important to keep your current programs in place, your grab-and-go, your delivery, your curbside. The more of those you can offer, to have more revenue streams, is going to be important. I think next year, we’ll know more about the future of restaurants.”