Front Burner - How the pandemic is shaping the future of dining

Episode Date: August 7, 2020

As provinces loosen COVID-19 restrictions, more restaurants are opening back up, in some capacity, all across Canada. Today, we hear from two restaurateurs about what the shutdown meant for their own businesses and how they think the pandemic will change the way we dine-out for years to come. Robert Belcham is the chef and owner of Vancouver’s Campagnolo, Monarch Burger and Popina Canteen. He’s also the president of The Chefs’ Table Society of B.C. and host of the ‘Mise-En-Place’ podcast. Samira Mohyeddin is the co-owner of Banu, an Iranian eatery and commissary in Toronto. She’s also an associate producer at the CBC Radio show The Current.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Yeah, what can I get for you? I'm going to go for the Reuben. The Reuben? Great choice. Can I get you a side with that?

Let's do sweet potato fries. Sweet potato fries, awesome. And for yourself. Can I get the fish tacos, please? The fish tacos? Perfect. I will get that up for you guys. You're welcome. That's the sound of lunch service at a spot in the east end of Toronto

where locals go when they want something delicious and for someone else to do the dishes. Of course, now everything's a bit different. When they enter the restaurant, we do have to fill out the contact tracing and have everyone document one member of their party, provide a phone number. So just in case we have an outbreak, which we hope we'll never have to contact them, they're able to be tracked. And same with everyone else who came in that day. Yeah, we have all our menus online. We have a QR code that you can scan.

You know, you'll have your own little space, your own little bubble away from everyone else. The beer's still cold, and the food's still great. Cheers. Enjoy the beers. and the food's still great. Cheers. Enjoy the beers.

As restaurants open up in some capacity in most places across the country, I'm talking with two restauranteurs about the reopening, surviving the shutdown, and how they think the pandemic will shape the future of dining. Robert Belcham is the chef and owner of Vancouver's Campagnolo, Monarch Burger and Papina Canteen. He's also the president of the Chef's Table Society of BC and host of the Mise en Place podcast.

Samira Moyadin is the co-owner of Banu, an Iranian eatery and commissary in Toronto. She's also an associate producer at the CBC radio show The Current, where I used to work. producer at the CBC radio show The Current, where I used to work. Fish tacos? Thank you. And a really good surprise. It's awesome. Enjoy.

That looks good. I'm Josh Bloch. This is Frontburner. Let's eat. Hello to you both. Hi, Josh. Hi there. So it feels like we're at this really weird moment of transition right now where a lot of restaurants across the country are now being allowed to open up indoor service,

of course, with limited seating and with new health guidelines. How are you feeling about this right now, Robert? That is the million-dollar question. I was tasked with helping our restaurant association here in British Columbia with coming up with the guidelines for all the restaurants in British Columbia. And we wanted to try to get everybody on the same page and work with the health department and work with the provincial department and work with the provincial government to come up with guidelines that made sense to restaurateurs and to chefs and to front

of the house managers. I think we've achieved that. The hard part is getting buy-in from all the different restaurants to get them to actually apply those guidelines and recommendations and then trying to earn customer confidence back. That's the biggest goal. Right, which I want to ask you about. But before I do, Samira, what's it been like for you right now at this moment to be part of this gradual reopening of indoor service? Well, we've actually decided not to participate in Phase 3 at this point. Stage 3 of reopening starts Friday. Playgrounds, gyms and movie theatres can reopen and restaurants can serve

indoors. We're not allowing people inside and we made that decision based on the fact that we're a small place and if you actually put tables six feet apart I might have maybe three tables in my entire establishment. So we have a lot more freedom just doing the patio at this moment and we're really liking this street life. You know, the moment that we were able to set up this patio and people started coming in, it's so strange the feeling you get. Like you just want to grab these people and be like, hello, I miss you. And it feels so, so odd because I have to tell you, like maybe, you know, a year ago I would have been like, oh, my God, here comes this same person again. You know, so you have a new appreciation for your patrons also.

I mean, I at least went through this because at times you can become a bit of a misanthrope in this business also. Right. But I have really come to appreciate customers and their wants and their needs in the past six months. That's interesting. And how, Robert, what are you hearing? You talked about trying to get buy-in from other restaurants. I mean, how challenging is it for restaurants to open back up after months of hiatus and within the guidelines that have been laid out? It's extremely challenging. Like just today, an hour ago, I announced that we are going to be reopening Campagnolo. We're going to be shuttering it for good, which has been very difficult for me to do as Campagnolo has been here for 12 years.

Wow. I'm sorry. Thank you very much. That's tough. It's a very tough situation. And I know that there's a lot of restaurateurs and a lot of owners across the country who are having to do this on a daily basis. And I feel for them. And, you know, it's a very tough business to begin with.

And the new guidelines, while they work, they don't work for everybody. And it's one of those things where, you know, you try and try and try. And at the end of the day, if the numbers just don't work, there's no sense in dying over a business. It just doesn't work. It doesn't make sense. I'm curious to know, what for you was the final straw? What made you decide to make that decision to close down the restaurant? It's the unknown of whether or not Phase 3 will actually stick. That's number one. Like we have a restaurant that's about 150 seats. It's not an overly large restaurant.

It's not as small as Samir's. We did a lot of the calculations and the math to try to figure out how to reopen with social distancing. We couldn't figure out a way to make it work unless we dramatically changed their menu or concept. Hospitality is a massive part of who our identity is. And as an Italian restaurant, the conviviality of the table and the dining with wine and all that sort of stuff, it does not lend itself to the way dining out is right now. And we decided that we don't know when that it's going to get better. And unless we can do it the way we want to do it, we're not going to do it at

all. And so we will, we will, the way we're going to pivot is close the restaurant and sell it and then hopefully open up something that makes more sense for this. I don't know the new normal, which I hate using that language, but it just, it just didn't work for us anymore. So that must have been a really difficult decision. I imagine that you've had some really tough conversations with the staff at that restaurant and everyone involved. Well, absolutely. The toughest.

The restaurant business, as Samir will attest to, it's a family thing. It's a family affair, whether or not your immediate family is working there or the staff become a part of your family. And to try to tell them that you aren't allowed to come to family meal anymore and we're going to be shuttering the doors is a very difficult situation. But it's a fact of life. It's either that or lose you know, lose my house and, you know, people do understand what's going on. Samira, your restaurant quite literally is a family run restaurant. Yeah, I mean, I'm very lucky to have my brother and sister there with me. And the staff, I mean, we don't have a lot of staff. I can count all the staff on my two hands.

But, you know, it was still difficult to tell them that, I mean, we're not shutting down. But when this first happened, we completely shut down for about a week and a half. And we're just trying to think, what do we do? You know, how do we pivot? Because it was really pivot or die. As Robert knows, I mean, the margins on a restaurant are so small to begin with. Nobody gets into this business to make a lot of money because that's just not how it works. You do it because you love community, because you love to put a smile on people's faces.

And when you can't have people come through your doors, you kind of think to yourself, well, what's the point of this? And the first thing that came to my mind was to start a GoFundMe. Like I swallowed my pride and really just put a call out and saying, look, if you love what we do, because we've been on Queen Street in Toronto for the past 15 years, basically saying we need your help. And I was so overwhelmed. We've raised $20,000 to date. And yeah, I was literally crying when the money started coming in because some of our patrons were donating $500, $1,000. And that was what really propelled us to keep going. So we took some of that money and we bought a fridge, like a merchant open air merchandising fridge.

And we started vacuum sealing our marinated meats, getting it ready for people to grill at home. And we basically made our place into a little market. And it's really been helpful that way because it still has that community feel. We're still seeing the people come and go. It's been a lifesaver, actually. I mean, according to Restaurants Canada, which is a nonprofit advocacy group, the industry is estimated to lose as much as $44 billion in annual sales compared to 2019. I mean, the numbers are astounding. It's not surprising. I mean, I read that 50% of restaurants in New York

City won't survive this. My own neighbors on the street, I've seen three or four places already shut down. It's quite scary. on CBC Gem, brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income. That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Robert, I wonder, what did that mean for you when there was the announcement that all restaurants had to shut down?

What did you guys do back at that time? That's an interesting story. I was in Toronto at the time, actually about to go to a Raptors game. Right. I got a call. I was in contact with my manager. And, you know, business was getting slower and slower because the people were getting worried. And then I'll never forget it. Actually, I woke up on a Saturday

morning and I looked at the news as I do every morning and 400 people had died in Italy overnight. Overnight, 400 people died of this virus. And that's when I made the call. I was like, no matter what, the safety of our staff and the safety of our patrons is the number one priority. We'll figure out the money after and we shut down and that was probably i think it was about three days before the bc government mandated that we shut down although i imagine back then you thought you probably thought it was going to be a couple weeks oh yeah yeah well absolutely nobody thought nobody thought we'd be talking about this five months later like that we're still shut down nobody in a million years would have thought that. So you just have to sort of do what a lot of restaurateurs have done, like become markets and take out places and things like that.

It's a lot to ask of a small restaurant and it's a lot to ask of an entire industry. Samira, you know, I have to confess that I have not gone to a restaurant yet. And I imagine that I'm probably in the majority. And as you say, the trust that patrons are going to have to feel in their restaurants, that the safety protocols are all there, is so important if customers are actually going to come in again. What will that look like? What do you think dining and restaurant needs to look like in order to kind of build that trust with patrons

to let them know that, in fact, that this is safe? I think we're going to see a real change in the dining experience, and we're already seeing that. So we're seeing touchless payment and stuff like that. But I think we might see a sort of cleaning theater happening too. I mean, I've dined out at a couple of places recently and there's a lot of spray happening, but that's not necessarily nice either

as you're sitting at a table and someone else is spraying the table beside you. What do you mean by cleaning theater? You know, like, cleanliness is going to be very important to people. So they're going to be looking when they come into a place, they're going to be looking to see what is this place doing? Is there sanitizer on the wall in the kitchen? For instance, I've worked in a lot of other people's restaurants before I opened a restaurant.

And I for sure made sure that the restaurant that I opened had an open kitchen. And it really calms people down when they can see, oh, my food is coming from there. Oh, that person is the person touching it. All of these things go into diners' heads. And I'm not saying all diners are like this, but a lot of people are thinking about this stuff now. And they're telling me these things. So I'm very conscious of it. Like when I go into places, I look to see, you know, the light switch, how clean is that? Like that to me is a marker of whether a place is clean or not. How clean is that light switch? Because the person bringing my food is the person

that's turning the lights on and off in that restaurant. So there's a lot of psychological things that I think maybe weren't there before are going to become really paramount right now. things that I think maybe weren't there before are going to become really paramount right now. Well, that is the number one key element is to try to bring that trust back to the dining public. And it's going to be the hardest thing. And cleaning and cleanliness and disinfecting is already a massive part of what they do on a daily basis. They're professionals at it. They clean constantly all day long. And it's reiterating that fact that they're better cleaners in the kitchen than probably in the janitorial service. I mean, with every restaurant that I've ever run and every restaurant that I've ever been a part of, you know, at least a quarter of your day is

spent cleaning up, cleaning down, disinfecting dishes. That's a massive part of who we are and what we do. I mean, how do you, Samira was saying earlier that she's not ready to open up her indoor dining yet. How do you feel about dining rooms opening up? Like, is this too soon? That, you know, that is a very big question. I mean, I've dined out, I've dined out at a few places. I love dining out. It's one of my favorite things to do. I'm a chef restaurateur, but I'm a diner first. I love going out and having a great bottle of wine, a great meal with friends and family. And right now, it is very difficult to not feel like you're in a bubble of disinfectant. When you go to a table, the protocol is that your table should be empty and everything should be brought to you as you sit down.

And so just even the act of sitting down, I'm like, I shouldn't be sitting down right now because my table's not set. So just even the act of sitting down, I'm like, I shouldn't be sitting down right now because my table's not set. So it's just it's very awkward right now. And it's going to take a little bit of time for people to get back into that groove of actually dining out. But what restaurants are amazing at is figuring out what customers want and then acclimating to it. So Samira, at Banu, what does dining out look like right now? You know, dining out really is dining on the street. We are able to, because of Toronto doing CafeTO, restaurants set up these makeshift, what I like to call my pandemic patio. You know, we have these big concrete blocks that the city has brought and they've plopped one in front of each restaurant.

And they've plopped one in front of each restaurant. And then they've put up these very hideous pylons, massive pylons that are like four feet tall so that the cars don't plow into you as you're eating on the street. So for me, I like the sort of grittiness of it. Some people have dressed up their patios. But what we did last Saturday, for instance, was I took our grill. It's a big charcoal grill that we use for catering events. And I plopped it on top of that big piece of concrete and just basically did an outdoor charcoal barbecue all day Saturday. And we had one of our best days that we normally have. So not during COVID.

It was like a regular Saturday. But I didn't have anybody inside my restaurant. I only had people outside and I was able to lock my doors at nine o'clock and leave. And Saturday we sat down after my brother, sister and I, and we thought, I don't want to go back to normal. I don't want that. I want to be able to keep this grocery, have a market, have some people inside, have this sort of dynamic feel where people are coming and going, but some people are dining, still be making the cocktails, but be able to close at nine. You know, normally we'd be leaving at 2.30 in the morning. And if it stays like this, like, I don't know what the winter is going to hold. That's not

going to be very nice because we can't have people sitting outside. So we are sort of freaked out about the winter coming. But right now, I'm really, we're enjoying this, you know. That's so interesting. So it's created an opportunity to innovate, to try out new things. Absolutely. And I was talking to my sister about this. These were things that we wanted to implement a long time ago, but the pandemic sort of pushed us and propelled us to have to do that. And it's been great, you know, and I have to say this, our landlords have been wonderful. We didn't get full rent relief, but we've only been paying the 25% of the rent right now. And that's been huge. So we've been very fortunate. And if my landlords are listening, thank you.

So interesting to hear the way that you have managed to be creative and find ways to survive, at least for the moment. For now. Well, as long as the subsidies keep coming in, and I know that that at some point will dry up. what other sorts of creative solutions are you seeing from restaurants to try and at least survive through this period of time? I mean, what Samira is doing is so amazing to me. And it's a testament to the ingenuity and the fortitude of people who are in this business. But my big concern is that it's not a sustainable it's not a sustainable thing like here in here in vancouver the city did a great job in like allowing all these small restaurants to open up patios but nobody's talking with the big elephant in the room is that it rains 250 days

a year here it's true and the same with toronto like it gets bloody cold there and you know it's great right now but in three months time, what's going to happen? looming over our heads. And it's very, very concerning because, I mean, for a lot of people, as you said, I'm, you know, when you shut down Campagnolo, Robert, I'm sure that, you know, you know, a lot of people who even when they do the numbers and it still doesn't add up, they still keep going. They will, they'll remortgage their homes. They'll do all of these things, even though they see, oh my God, I'm, you know, going, I'm bankrupt, or I have to give my car away, or I, you know, I took my kids' school money, you know, to keep going. And a lot of people are losing not just their restaurants, they're losing their homes. A lot of people will say, well, look, restaurants are shifting, and they're using Uber Eats and

DoorDash and finding ways to deliver more that people are ordering in more. How does that translate into profits for restaurants? Yeah, but they're taking all your profit. A company like Uber Eats, you know, will take 30% of that bill. 30%? Up to 30% is your profit. You're basically working for these delivery apps. Yeah.

Foodora, DoorDash, Uber Eats, you know, Skip the Dishes. They are the bane of the restaurant tour. Truth. When we get an order and I'm just like, oh, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to pay that 30 points. And it's like the only thing that's good about it is it just keeps the customers happy and it keeps the food fresh because it just keeps on going out the door. Wow. Wow. Yeah. So it's just, it's not, that's not going to be the model that will save restaurants

if this pandemic goes on for a long time. Definitely not. Definitely not. It's so heartbreaking to hear, partly because it feels to me like the antidote in many ways to the kind of isolation and loneliness and separation that so many of us are feeling during the pandemic is restaurants, is being able to eat communally and to see people and to be in crowded places. What do you think that we are at risk of losing if restaurants can't come back in the way that we knew them before the pandemic? Samira? I think community. I mean, you lose communities. You've gone through funerals with them. You've done their weddings, graduations. You've been there when they had their first date.

Now their child is two years old. So these relationships get formed. And, you know, once the industry gets decimated, you'll see entire communities disappear. Yes, food is culture. And when you lose that part of the community in that sense of what's going on, you know, you lose a big facet of what Canada is today. Well, I hope I get a chance to walk inside both of your restaurants soon. Thank you so much for speaking with me today. Thanks, Josh. Thanks, Robert. It was nice to meet you. Very nice to chat with both of your restaurants soon. Thank you so much for speaking with me today. Thanks, Josh. Thanks, Robert. It was nice to meet you. Very nice to chat with both of you. Thank you. Front Burner is brought to you by CBC News and CBC Podcasts. This show was produced this week by Mark Apollonio, Shannon Higgins, Sarah Jackson,

Allie Janes, and Derek Vanderwyk. Mandy Sham does our sound design with help from Mac Cameron. Our music is by Joseph Chabison of Boombox Sound. The executive producer of Frontburner this week was Elaine Chao. I'm Josh Bloch. Thank you for listening.

Michelle Shepard is hosting on Monday. Yay! Michelle Shepard! Goodbye! For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.