Amid coronavirus fears, Triangle restaurants turn to delivery and takeout to stay afloat
In this time of the coronavirus, the new normal changes by the hour.
For restaurants across the Triangle, the new normal often means an unusually emptier dining room, pushing many to pivot to delivery and takeout options.
For Raleigh’s Oakwood Pizza Box, that means “pizza valet,” where instead of walking into the often-busy Person Street restaurant, pizzas are brought out curbside, and whisked away with minimal interaction.
“I thought I had seen everything in the restaurant business,” owner Anthony Guerra said.
As people look to limit exposure and the spread of the coronavirus, the typical routines of life are adapting. Restaurant owners are adapting too, altering their service to handle more curbside takeout and even adding delivery.
Guerra said Oakwood Pizza Box would start quoting longer wait times for orders, so customers don’t bottleneck near the door. The restaurant only has a couple dozen seats and has always done a steady to-go business.
“We can make more pizzas than we have seats,” Guerra said. “(Restaurants) will lean towards to-go orders. That’s coming soon. Fortunately, pizza is delicious to-go. It’s delicious the next day. I’ll keep making pizzas as long as people keep eating them.”
‘Common sense’ at Copa
Delivery and pickup are second nature for a pizzeria, but less-so for downtown Durham Cuban restaurant Copa. The Main Street restaurant owned by Elizabeth Turnbull and Roberto Matos serves tapas-style Cuban food, including familiar pork sandwiches and fried plantains, but also dishes like pork terrine and lamb meatballs. Everything will now be available on DoorDash.
“It’s just common sense,” Turnbull said. “If they’re home and told not to go out, it makes sense to have stuff brought to them.”
The ripple effect of canceling major events means the restaurants downtown and near venues take a hit. Turnbull said Copa is seeing about a 20% drop in business and reservations cut by nearly half.
“Our business is down, but I wouldn’t say it’s dead,” Turnbull said.
To change with the times and keep business going, Copa is adding DoorDash as a delivery partner, plus customers can also order takeout and Copa employees will bring the food out to the car.
In the past, Copa hadn’t seriously considered delivery, because of fees and the challenging logistics of packing to-go orders take on a busy kitchen. But now it’s an experiment born from necessity.
“Logistically it can be hard on a kitchen, but if we’re going to be a less busy kitchen, it’s something to try,” Turnbull said.
In downtown Raleigh, the Wilmington Street Cajun restaurant St. Roch will add delivery next week, serving a pared down menu of mostly fried seafood po-boys, red beans and rice, and gumbo. They’ll also deliver unopened bottles of wine and beer. For now, St. Roch is handling the deliveries in-house, with chef-owner Sunny Gerhart handling them himself. Gerhart said delivery was something he had researched for months, but wanted to try now as a means of social distancing.
“Things have changed incredibly quickly,” Gerhart said. “It’s hard enough to run a business with super thin margins. Delivery wasn’t something that was planned for, but we have to be able to adjust.”
Likewise, St. Roch has seen business drop by at least 20%, Gerhart said.
New policies and a capped dining room
In Durham, the incredibly popular breakfast and lunch spot Monuts has remade its operation to meet the challenges of the coronavirus. Monuts is now takeout and delivery only on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, its busiest days of the week. On weekdays it’s capping the dining room at 50 people and encouraging diners to take their order to-go.
“Over the coming weeks and possibly months, we ask that you bear with us as we roll out and enforce new policies here at Monuts,” the owners said in a statements. “We also ask that you show kindness to our staff members. We do not have the privilege of being able to ‘work from home,’ which makes the current situation all the more scary for us. We are hoping that smaller steps now can help us to avoid a full closure in the future.”
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At fast-casual Mexican restaurant NuvoTaco in Durham, overall business is down, but owner Jennifer Gillie said takeout orders are up by about a third. In trying to mitigate the spread of coronavirus, Gillie said the restaurant temporarily shelved its popular salsa bar and switched to packaged utensils, among other measures.
Around the Triangle on Friday, restaurants took to social media to quell fears about eating in their dining rooms, taking measures such as removing tables and creating more space. Some asked fans to consider gift cards, to keep money flowing into the restaurant and saving up meals for more stable times.
“That’s what’s so great about this area is so many people posting about supporting local businesses,” Gillie said. “We won’t survive this without that support.”
This story was originally published March 13, 2020 at 7:12 PM.
