The past year has seen menus shrink and dinner plates swapped for take-out containers as the U.S. foodservice industry has tried to keep its bearings amid the jarring COVID-19 pandemic.
While this switch in approach from onsite dining to at-home delivery has been a natural progression for foodservice providers during the current era of social distancing and sheltering in place, it hasn’t necessarily been an entirely smooth one or without its unique puzzles, according to Phillips Foods Vice President of Business Development Brice Phillips.
Phillips has worked for his family’s business, Phillips Foods and Seafood Restaurants, for his entire career, specializing in the foodservice and manufacturing sides of the enterprise. The Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.-based Phillips Foods owns and operates seven factories in Indonesia, India, Thailand, and Vietnam, with its corporate Asia headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand. At these facilities, the company processes primarily blue swimming crab meat, yellowfin tuna, and value-added seafood products.
During a breakout session at this week’s virtual Global Seafood Marketing Conference, hosted by the National Fisheries Institute (NFI), Phillips reviewed the obstacles and opportunities seafood businesses like his have been facing as they’ve recalibrated their menus and kitchens to fit the times.
“We scaled our menu down significantly. What we found is that the sales trends for full-service, in-person dining, they’re very different in the summer than they are in the winter, and they’re certainly very different for delivery,” Phillips said. “Some of our items that have much bigger portions simply do not fit in a standard eight- or nine-inch take-out cube. And for us, we didn’t have time to really trial it – we just had to start sending stuff out and hope for the best. We had to cut out items that were either low-velocity sellers or just did not travel well.”
Delivery models, including ghost kitchens, have offered support to the seafood foodservice sector in its time of tremendous need, Phillips said.
“I’m starting see some folks set up really efficient real estate specifically for ghost kitchens,” he said.
Transitioning to these kinds of models, however, is no easy feat, Phillips noted, with providers required to strategically refine their menus, from product to price, and navigate new types of partnerships with third-party delivery services.
“There’s labor and supplies that are used by folks when they’re dining in-person that aren’t necessarily used in a delivery model,” he said. “I think if you’re adapting your restaurant menu to a delivery model, you really have to take that into account. You can’t just take your restaurant items and slap them onto a delivery menu at the same price and expect customers to pay for it, because they’re also going to be hit with a roughly 30 percent fee on top from the third-party delivery models. You have to be mindful on portions, on temperature, and on the right types of products that work for delivery.”
A higher bar must be cleared with a foodservice delivery approach, according to Phillips.
“You want the best experience for somebody if they’re going to spend that much money on a seafood entrée – you want it to be as best as it can possibly be, because the bar is a lot higher,” Phillips said. “When they’re sitting in a really nice restaurant with a leather-clad booth, nice lighting, and ambiance, it’s different then when they’re taking it out of a take-out container at their house and sitting down in front of the TV or at the table with their kids. So, the food has got to be right, it’s got to be hot, the portions have to be perfect, cooking temperatures have to be perfect.”
Phillips added that locating and securing “the right amount of help to be able to staff these kitchens in this pandemic has been extremely difficult.”
For foodservice operators that can find a rhythm in this environment, Phillips said new market potential awaits, considering the likelihood of more jobs shifting to home offices.
“What I’m seeing in the future is that, if we’re going to have a lot of America staying home for their jobs after COVID, that’s going to create an entirely new [segment] for delivery during the middle of the day,” he said.
Phillips expressed concern about COVID vaccination rates in the U.S.
“I’m really, really concerned about this country’s unwillingness to be vaccinated. The willingness to vaccinate is just not high enough. I think that we’re going to be dealing with this COVID situation far longer than we originally anticipated,” Phillips said. “I’m worried about the effect of disinformation in the past year-and-a-half about vaccines.”
Photo courtesy of Yuriy Golub/Shutterstock
