Restaurants’ New Normal

There’s a low-profile country store display in a dusty corner of Ann Arbor’s otherwise noisy and kinetic Hands-On Museum. Hovering over a glass case of fading penny candy is a large sepia-tone photo of the old Drake’s Sandwich Shop. Its tall wooden booths are evocative of time gone by, when Drake’s anchored North University Ave. from the 1920s to its closure in 1993. Cops and students both frequented it—even at the same time. Fans still mourn the loss, three decades on.

It can make you wonder about the yet-unwritten legacy of today’s restaurants. What sweet spots are they hitting that may someday let them be remembered for triumphant half-century-plus runs?

Perhaps the more pressing question has to do with how eateries are navigating late-Covid-pandemic challenges brought on by supply-chain troubles, inflation, and constant staffing difficulties.

First, props to every business still standing in the second half of 2023, after extreme phases of Covid spread and subsequent restrictions continue to fade. There were many losses; for a couple years now, turning the page to the Observer’s Marketplace Closings column has been as much of a minefield as browsing obituaries.

What? Jim Brady’s is gone already? Its big buildout on Main St. made it seem so well capitalized! And Mongolian Grill? It ruled for decades from its perch on the corner of Washington and Main—a generation of local kids learned to “cook” by assembling their own plates and handing them over to the hipster wok masters. But the building needed work, and crowded raw-food buffets were no longer having a moment.

Fortunately, plenty of restaurants found ways to survive and even thrive. Walking through downtown on a nice Saturday evening can reveal a lot of nightlife and dining bustle. There are also signs (literally) of self-recognition
and/or gratitude for business longevity—such as Sweetwaters’ thirty-year anniversary and thirty-four years of Amadeus.

So what does success require now? Some innovations that were necessities during the hardest days have been made permanent. One example is Black Pearl’s “canned cocktails,” which now can be made to order by the bartender anytime and then sealed tight with a plastic top to go. Around the corner, TAQ Taqueria has compensated for its small indoor seating area with major investment in luxury year-round curb dining. It sets up fans and giant cacti in the summer and heaters and private dining structures in the winter.

Jefferson Market, grandfathered into Ann Arbor’s mostly residential Old West Side historic district, held on to an outside dining and a carryout-only business model for much longer than public health orders mandated. “We have had to adapt and improve through every part of the pandemic. The mid- to late part was no different,” explains co-owner Angie May. “We had kept our staff small so that our ‘bubble’ was small. But when we were ready to hire more staff to handle the growing business, there were no people to hire.

“Between staffing shortages, supply-chain issues, and the increase in food costs, this stage of the pandemic has been just as challenging, if not more, than the beginning. The ‘carryout’ model has gotten us through the past three years, and as we transition back to indoor dining we will adapt again so that we can maintain that side of the business.”

For many eateries, it still makes sense to offer an efficient online ordering and coordinated delivery service and/or dedicated parking spaces for preordered pickup. (But maybe don’t reserve all the best parking spots close to the building for pickup… because isn’t that kind of frustrating to regular customers when the weather’s nasty?)

Practices that eliminate food waste or save money in other ways are also part of the new normal. Zingerman’s Next Door Café on Detroit St. now keeps only one kind of brewed coffee (their medium-roast Next Door Café Signature Blend) in a big urn throughout the day. If you want something lighter, darker, or decaffeinated, they’ll make up a cup at the counter. A staffer confirmed it was a pandemic adjustment (away from having multiple urns going constantly in the before-times) that stuck. And Main Street Ventures—which operates more than a dozen restaurants in Ann Arbor and beyond—recently let go of longstanding birthday discounts for diners at flagship restaurants like the Chop House and Real Seafood Co. on Main St.

One Ann Arbor restaurateur has adopted splashy automation aids. In mid-2022 Ahmad Hodroj, owner of Palm Palace on Washtenaw, found a far-flung solution to the struggle to hire staff: He spent $10,000 for two BellaBot serving robots from China. With some clever feline-morphic features, they carry food to tables (after humans take the orders and cook and plate them) and take empty plates away. They also meow when their heads are scratched and can sing “Happy Birthday” in English and Arabic.

“They’ve been very reliable, with very little maintenance needed,” Hodroj says, adding that the robots save him about $500 a day in labor costs. “And they generate extra sales because more clients, especially with children, visit us just to interact and play with the kitty robots—some are driving from Ohio just to see the robots.”

Hodroj notes that some customers, unaware of the labor shortage, “worried that having robots means that servers’ jobs will be eliminated and replaced by robots.” It’s a poignant reminder of the complexity and society-wide concerns in difficult times.

Many new restaurants are set up for fast-casual counter ordering (think Chipotle). At others, patrons are expected to pull out their smartphones and scan a QR code to see the menu. When they decide what they want, they can order on their phone, or walk up to the counter. A runner brings food to their table when it’s ready.

Time-saving QR-code-ordering scenarios in restaurants became ubiquitous in recent years, as you probably know unless you quarantined really intensely. But adaptation to the little black-and-white square (which miraculously links to menus and online ordering systems when scanned with a smartphone) has not always been fast or happy. Without questioning the technology’s potential to streamline the work of hard-to-find restaurant staff, actual experiences reveal some issues. What about the customers who left their phones at home or have run out of charge? Or customers whose phones are too old to read the codes? There may be late adapters who need coaching or opt-outers of any age.

“I am on a computer all day and don’t want to be spending my time looking down on my phone when I am out for a nice dinner with friends or family,” says Gen X Ann Arborite Craig Holland. “Just give me a paper menu!”

Many places that use QR code menus are also offering a physical option. Elegantly modern Venue on South Industrial now has supplementary paper menus. So does Jolly Pumpkin on Main, although recently a server there was also telling diners about a discrepancy between paper and online versions: They didn’t match for a while after the debut of a new BBQ pizza (which is delicious, by the way).

After a widely publicized hack of QR-coded parking meters in Texas, the FBI put out a 2022 public service announcement titled “Cybercriminals Tampering with QR Codes to Steal Victim Funds.” Although QR codes in restaurants, which are usually table-specific, seem less risky, it doesn’t hurt to keep some of the FBI warnings in mind. For example: “Do not download an app from a QR code. Use your phone’s app store for a safer download.”

Recently, a PR group reached out to the Observer encouraging coverage of “the introduction of QR Order & Pay 3.0 as a replacement for QR Menu 2.0, eliminating human error, increasing table turnover, human interaction, and providing a flexible dining experience, with insights gathered through data and analytics.” The timing was ironic, with simultaneous local reporting and testimonials indicating less than completely positive feelings about the rise of restaurant tech.

There’s a simple marketing practice to take advantage of QR codes, especially for places with many menu items and other business information to communicate. They can place their QR code behind glass facing out from their front door or window to communicate their offerings, hours, and more to interested passersby. Jerusalem Garden does this. But in a visual survey of Liberty St. from William to State, only five of the thirty restaurants, cafés, and bars with doors opening to the street were visibly posting QR codes to passersby. Amusingly, Condado Tacos at 401 E. Liberty has large squares of black and white design on its windows that look a lot like QR codes but aren’t.

A few blocks away in Kerrytown, Detroit Street Filling Station vegan restaurant has a loyal clientele that reportedly does pretty well using the integrated Toast ordering and payment system, according to owner Phillis Engelbert. She used Square before reopening the dining room and switching to Toast in late 2022. She believes automation “is here to stay” but accommodates about 20 percent of her customers who still opt out to use paper (as in menus and cash). Engelbert says she and her managers can use Toast data to make changes on the fly. When it gets really busy—as often happens on weekends—time-intensive items can be dropped from the app until the kitchen has time to catch up.

At Engelbert’s more recently launched North Star Lounge music venue next door, older Observer staffers have experienced first-timer
learning curves. When editor John Hilton and his wife, retired profiles editor Eve Silberman, went to hear Gwenyth Hayes, he emails, he fumbled his first attempt: “the manager had to rescue us by setting up a tab for us and putting in our first order.” He eventually figured out how to order two mocktails, “but at the end of the show, it turned out that my order hadn’t merged with the original one, and [the manager] again had to bail us out before we could pay … I expect others, too, were learning as they went.”

Engelbert herself says she has issues at times with Toast, but adds, “There’s no perfect system.”

Would Engelbert ever bag automation—or use QR codes just for marketing? “Here’s my marketing,” she answers with a smile, waving an arm at the profusion of healthy-looking succulents, flowers, and greenery in and around the restaurant at every wall. She closed by expressing appreciation for her staffers in the recovery community, many of whom had a particularly hard time during the pandemic. She believes they’re a reason she’s still staffed and in business.

No two restaurants have the same survival story, even in our proverbial “interesting times.” The food business is always going to be tricky. Drake’s Sandwich Shop opened in the 1920s and managed to survive into the 1990s, adapting along the way—though few remember the Walnut Room, where waiters spun tunes from owner Truman Tibbals’s collection of big band records during WWII. The recollection prompted a visit to Drake’s old 709 North University site, just in case the walls had something to communicate.

 No, of course, but one of the two workers looked up from vigorously mopping the floor of the site (now a Bruegger’s Bagels) late on a Sunday morning and was quick to shout out the open door: “We’re closed! We ran out of bagels! We sold them all—so we get to close early!”

Happy words indeed.