Is Counter Service the Way forward for Eating places?

Watching proprietor Brooks Headley pour olive oil within the kitchen of Superiority Burger in New York, Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel had a realization. It was the identical olive oil used at Del Posto, the Michelin-starred restaurant the place each cooks had labored. However as a substitute of gracing superb china plates set atop white tablecloths, Headley was pouring the flamboyant olive oil into paper boats that usually held dishes like preserved lemon chicory salad and malt cake with blueberry compote at his quick informal vegetarian burger restaurant. 

“Whoever wrote the principles?” she remembers pondering. “Why do eating places need to be a sure method?”

A couple of years later, Malechek-Ezekiel and her husband, sommelier and hospitality veteran Arjav Ezekiel, thought of what they’d need their very own restaurant to appear like—a enjoyable place with nice meals, wine, and hospitality. Then they deliberate tips on how to make it occur within the face of the business’s hovering labor and meals prices.

“We needed to construct this mannequin from scratch figuring out what we all know right this moment in regards to the economics of eating places,” says Ezekiel. 

They signed a lease for an area in Austin only one month earlier than Covid emerged, and opened Birdie’s in 2021. The restaurant and wine bar, named Meals & Wine’s 2023 Restaurant of the Yr, was impressed partially by locations like Superiority Burger and Sqirl in Los Angeles, that married extra bold meals with a counter service mannequin.

Within the final a number of years, counter service eating places—i.e., the place prospects place their orders and pay at a counter or through QR code somewhat than being seated and served by waitstaff at a desk—are proliferating. It’s thanks partially to pandemic-induced labor shortages, surging prices of meals and labor, and an rising shopper desire for comfort. Within the coming years, the short service restaurant sector is anticipated to proceed to develop.

Some diners aren’t but offered on the mannequin; complaints embrace feeling hurried, a scarcity of service and story-telling in regards to the menu, and tipping fatigue. Nonetheless, with 98% of operators reporting that larger labor is a matter for his or her restaurant, 97% citing larger meals prices, and 38% reporting their eating places weren’t worthwhile final 12 months, based on the Nationwide Restaurant Affiliation 2024 state of the business report, change is important. It’s led some operators to rethink long-established guidelines about service and hospitality in a method that would reshape the restaurant business.  

At Birdie’s, which serves dinner Tuesday via Saturday, diners queue as much as order on the counter, and discover a desk to await dishes like $24 orecchiette with subject peas and pecorino and $19 beef tartare with a carta di musica. However though it’s technically a counter service mannequin, Ezekiel and Malechek-Ezekiel have additionally been laser-focused on the diner expertise.

“The layering of hospitality was the key ingredient,” says Ezekiel. “Persons are coming in, arms crossed, with low expectations for what that piece would appear like. And that is the place you get a possibility to blow their socks off somewhat bit.”

They do that with easy issues, like refilling visitors’ water glasses, clearing tables, and having the sommelier reply questions in regards to the wine listing. However in addition they may pour complimentary port for a pair celebrating a twentieth anniversary, or sharing a printed listing of their favourite eating places within the metropolis with out-of-town guests. 

The consequence? Not solely is the enterprise thriving, however, says Ezekiel, “The most important profit is that we get to put money into our group.” Staffers working greater than 25 hours are included within the tip pool (tipping, notes Ezekiel, averages about 22%), worker medical insurance and psychological healthcare is sponsored, and staff receives a commission trip whereas the restaurant closes for a month annually.

Ed Crochet and Justine MacNeil, the couple behind Philadelphia’s Fiore, reimagined their restaurant after the pandemic. On the heels of closing their four-year-old full service, 78-seat location in favor of a a lot smaller area, the cooks dropped dinner service. Now, diners order Italian-inspired pastries and egg sandwiches on freshly-baked focaccia for breakfast and housemade pastas and slow-cooked pork sandwiches at lunch, and take numbers to a desk to await their meals, served on floral ceramic dishware. 

Like Birdie’s, Fiore gives heat and environment friendly service, delivering drinks and meals and clearing tables, however counter service made extra sense within the smaller area with smaller test sizes. Additionally, Crochet provides, “The labor price factor is actual.” Eating places turning to a extra concentrated type of service, he says, are doing so “as a result of the again of home staff now price a lot extra money than they did earlier than the pandemic.”

Nonetheless, the counter service mannequin hasn’t been a match for each restaurant. In Reno, Nevada, the recently-opened Madein was envisioned round a counter service mannequin, says co-owner Rachel Macintyre. Payroll was a foremost issue, however the homeowners have been additionally impressed by Grassa in Portland, a no-frills counter service mannequin serving elevated Italian dishes. 

“We actually needed to create this superb dining-meets-fast informal expertise,” Macintyre says. However after the primary evening of the restaurant’s family and friends tender opening, they pivoted to desk service for dinner. “In bigger city communities like Portland, the place Grassa is positioned, [counter service] is turning into extra widespread,” she says. “It is not right here in Reno. There are perhaps three eating places that do it, so it is simply new, and I feel that induced quite a lot of confusion.”

What’s extra, the Madein group felt that with out the added facetime with servers, they have been lacking out on storytelling in regards to the menu gadgets like Black Rabbit mead, made with honey from the close by Sierra Nevada mountains, that make the restaurant particular. They have been additionally warned diners wouldn’t tip as effectively on counter service—a prediction they’ve seen play out. Till not too long ago, Madein was nonetheless providing counter service at lunch, and though menu costs at lunch and dinner are roughly the identical, the typical tip hovered round 10%, whereas desk service dinner clocks in round 25%.

As eating places proceed to run on slim margins, operators proceed to search out new methods to construct companies that work. 

“Tracy and I actually consider in counter service, however we additionally consider counter service is one potential resolution to a few of the issues that eating places are going through on the monetary aspect,” says Ezekiel. “There are different methods to additionally resolve it primarily based on which market you are in.” 

With that mentioned, the couple has not too long ago fielded inquiries from a number of operators in numerous states searching for to study in regards to the Birdie’s mannequin. 

“I feel lots of people see this as the way forward for eating places,” he mentioned.