6 CASES OF DELIVERY

1. Long term vision. Delivery and take away are not only working as a strategy to deal with the temporary closure of the hotel industry as a result of the declaration of the state of alarm, but rather, hoteliers see them as formats that they will maintain in the short, medium and , even, long term when they reopen their businesses. Thus, almost all the businesses that did not have delivery and have now debuted with this service estimate that they will maintain it once their physical headquarters reopen; that is, they do not see it as something specific.

2. Current motivations. In recent weeks, the launch of a delivery and/or take away line as a result of the temporary closure of bars and restaurants has made it possible to propose a way of generating income (the only one feasible with the establishments closed) at a time in which the hotel establishments have stopped billing; Dispose of products in stock (or, in the first days of the quarantine, liquidate stocks); test a new business format that can be useful as a complement when the restaurant reopens; offer a service for people who, due to different circumstances, cannot cook at home or simply feel useful and keep the owner busy and the business active during the weeks of confinement.

3. Future plugin. When the hotel business reopens, it is assumed that the premises will have to adapt to a much smaller capacity (to guarantee separation between tables due to possible demands to continue fighting the pandemic) and a drop in clientele during Several months. Delivery and take away may work, above all, during this time, as an alternative and complement to the new social customs.

4. Necessary, but complex. Several of the hoteliers who have launched it in recent weeks acknowledge that food delivery is almost a necessity to respond to the new market context, while warning of the complexity of setting it up.

5. 'Memory' effect. In line with keeping the business partially active, delivery also works as a formula for customers to continue remembering the hotel business while it is closed, without forgetting that a customer will visit a restaurant in the future for a souvenir of the past.

6. Loyal diners. It is feasible that a relevant percentage of delivery users are previous regular customers of the restaurant.

7. Philosophy from the kitchen and the living room. Food delivery means giving food at the home of others and, at the same time, it proposes a dining room service at home.

8. platforms. You can opt for platforms that work via app such as Glovo, Deliveroo or JustEat; bet on smaller companies or set up your own delivery service. These last two options limit the delivery radius.

9. Content of the offer. It is convenient that the offer is based on dishes that travel well and that arrive correctly to the diner, with the option of sending it 100% unfinished and with instructions to finish the dish at home (for example, pasta that is finished cooking at home, apart from sauces in separate containers). The offer dispatched as delivery or take away is usually shorter than the usual restaurant menu and almost always more 'casual' (even more homemade) than the main offer.

10. Packaging. This is a matter of general concern for hoteliers interested in delivering food at home, both for finding the ideal packaging for transporting and presenting the food, and for identifying sustainable packaging from an environmental point of view.

11. Personnel. For recently launched businesses, the reduction in personnel after the ERTES limits the work capacity and organization of delivery. A challenge in the medium and long term will be, with the businesses reopened, how the work will be distributed within the team between the usual restaurant service and delivery-take away.

12. Suppliers. The relationship with suppliers is also decisive when setting up a delivery-take away offer, which, right now, could generate synergies with small local producers who run the risk of losing products due to the temporary closure of the hostelry.

13. Profitability. Despite the fact that delivery is a way to keep a business active during these weeks, it may not be a very profitable line (it seeks to adjust costs a lot, also adding shipping costs, which together can reduce margins), nor is it particularly relevant as a source of income generation (unless a high sales volume is achieved), especially in its early stages.

14. Personal business ‘versus’ groups. Despite the fact that hotel groups may have greater infrastructure (from workshops to machines for packaging, storing and preserving food; even more facilities to comply with sanitary requirements), it is possible that, at present, they have more chances of success businesses without branches under the leadership of the owner who guarantees care in the food delivery format.

15. Internal entrepreneurship. The launch of delivery-take away, as a quick reaction by some hoteliers to the temporary closure of their premises, conceptualizes a type of internal entrepreneurship within the hotel business.

With a Michelin star at Amelia (which was in the process of inaugurating its new headquarters at Hotel Villa Favorita when the state of alarm was declared), Paulo Airaudo , an Argentine chef with Italian family origins based in San Sebastián, has launched a delivery service from Da Filippo, “where we have modernized the style of a slightly more refined trattoria” and which was inaugurated in late 2019 at Amelia's old location, and 1985 Cantina Argentina, a 'casual' concept of Argentine dishes. Dispatch your menus at home through the JustEat and Glovo platform.

“We had always had the plan to do take aways at Da Filippo. With this crisis, we have accelerated it ”, explained Paulo Airaudo in his participation in the online workshop on delivery organized by Culinary Action! In his opinion, you have to deal with “the fear of facing something you've never done and for which there really isn't an 'ABC' because every business is different. This is looking for life. We seek that what we do contributes to the city, that everything makes sense. I've been trying to do it for a long time. I also think that the person who is ordering food already knows me and that the businesses that previously worked with delivery are doing relatively well”.

As advice for devising a delivery offer, he points out “finding something that will arrive well at home. It's not about doing anything weird; people want to eat delicious food, it doesn't have to be well decorated or strange”.

At Da Filippo, the take away and delivery format consists of “sending the fresh pasta [it is finished cooking at home] with its sauce and instructions. Asking for take away pasta seems like suicide. He already did it among some neighbors, when he lived in Geneva where he had a star in a restaurant it was a trattoria ”. In 1985 Cantina Argentina, the takeaway or delivery food protest is based on roast chicken and empanada, which “are dishes that come home well”.

In the two locations, both delivery and take away are offered, while, right now, work is centralized in Da Filippo's kitchen. For delivery, both locations work with JustEat and Glovo, which have not quite convinced Paulo Airaudo, “I am very pragmatic when it comes to numbers; numbers are numbers, it's what I base all my structures on. The commissions [from these platforms] get you into trouble; they are charging 30% which is more than our profit. It can turn into a price war. For this reason, to present the offer, we made it simple: what we charge is our price plus 30%”.

At the same time, it is realistic: delivery is a way to keep the business active, but it is not a very profitable line, nor is it particularly relevant as a source of income generation for a hospitality business. “What percentage of the business did we manage to keep active with delivery? Very little; Just enough to keep people busy, but not even enough to keep them going."

Looking forward in the future, they hope to continue to offer delivery and take away when their restaurants reopen. “When we return to normality, these services will be maintained because it is not that we have rethought the business, but that we are going to adjust it to reality. We will surely lose capacity and we will maintain delivery by improving packaging”, he foresees.

In addition, they are preparing to incorporate an offer of Italian and Argentine wines to pick up the bottle or send it to your home address. “It is a very interesting business model that, in Spain, is not frequent”, says Paulo Airaudo.

Traditional eatery in Madrid, De la Riva is owned by Pepe Morán. It usually opens only at noon and is a very frequent destination for business lunches. When the mandatory closure of the hotel industry was decreed due to the declaration of the state of alarm, the owner decided to launch a food sales service from De la Riva: a daily menu for €20 (with various options of dishes that he communicates via Instagram and on his website and that he calls the 'staff menu'). The client can pick it up or send a taxi; It is not attached to any platform, but the restaurant does home delivery within a zip code in its area of ​​the Chamartín neighborhood (and in other neighborhoods). It can be ordered by phone or online. Charge an extra 7 euros for shipping.

Days before the state of alarm, he already sent a newsletter to his clients telling them that if the hotel business was closed as had happened in Italy, he would give food at home. Pepe Morán launched this service on March 14, the day on which De la Riva closed and the owner began to prepare the food in the restaurant alone. “I started by myself, very lost, because normally I am in the restaurant room and it had been a long time since I had been in the kitchen. I gave 20 orders.” On the one hand, it had already considered offering this service; on the other, there were customers of a certain age who demanded to receive food at home.

Later, the hotelier organized himself and now relies on a third of the 12 employees with whom De la Riva usually works, who manage to provide between 80 and 100 meals per day. If in a daily service in your restaurant you can give about 60 meals for an average ticket starting at 45 euros, now you can give more than 100 for 20 euros. We understand that it means to give food in the house of others. I'm learning. It has to be profitable. De la Riva is not an NGO. I have received all the payments from suppliers and associations and I have had to pay everything”, he explains.

At first, they considered relying on a home delivery company. “I started with a platform, I signed the contract and, after 6 days, I left it and returned the material, because the customer service has not seemed good to me. I'm my age and it's hard for me to understand these things”, reasons the hotelier, who resorts to hisown delivery system. “I do the casting with the guy who parks the cars in De la Riva and another of the staff”. In addition, you can pick up the food at the restaurant or send a taxi.

The hotelier acknowledges that it is based on a trial-error that is proving satisfactory. “It is turning out to be interesting and I plan to maintain it when we reopen the restaurant. It is a different line of business with different hours than the restaurant, since no one came to eat until 2:15 p.m. and our kitchen opens until 6:00 p.m. I think that the client who asks for it does so earlier and is compatible”, argues Pepe Morán. “Customers send us photos with our dishes on their tableware and with the flowers that we also send them. I can't be more grateful."

In his case, as in the case of Paulo Airaudo (with Da Filippo and 1985 Cantina Argentina), it is his regular customer who else is demanding this service. "There are many of my clients who just ask, which forgives me for my mistakes," says Pepe Morán, who recounts his experience from home, since today, Tuesday, March 7, is the first day that he closes since he began offering this service on day 14 and will keep it during all the days of Holy Week. "I take commitments from parents of my clients who live far away because I can't say no," he adds.

In the opinion of Pepe Morán, this service “is very closely linked to restaurants or unique eating houses where there is a close relationship between place and person. You can have a designer, stars, affable, friendly, wonderful staff, but if you don't have a person in charge, it's hard. I see hotel companies with workshops and whose business purpose is partly all of this, but if there isn't a person who deceives and involves, it won't work. To try it, that person needs the support of the people who do it with him, the uniqueness and the place”.

The hotelier believes that more restaurants will offer this service soon. “Some businesses have done something because they had no choice. The traditional restaurant can catch us with a changed step. I am nothing. I don't have magnificent techniques, nor an incredible site, but I do have a clear will that this should be done. I urge [other businesses] to have an ‘oasis point’ so that people can go down to buy even a ham sandwich.”

Grupo Kabuki has 7 restaurants serving Japanese-Iberian cuisine (based in Madrid, Málaga, Tenerife and Valencia and with 4 Michelin stars), with Ricardo Sanz and José Antonio Aparicio as co-owners. Kirei is their informal format (which includes airport venues). Two weeks after the closure due to the state of alarm, they have launched a delivery service under the brand 'Kirei by Kabuki', from the Kabuki Wellington space, through the Deliveroo platform.

In 1998, Ricardo Sanz had already operated a home delivery service at another company. In 2002, they already began offering it with Kabuki. After several changes and with the Kirei brand focused, for example, on catering or airports, the temporary closure due to Covid-19 led them to launch the service two weeks after the declaration of the state of alarm. “It has been ajourney in the desert. The road has been long. We close 14 days to quarantine. After that time, we check that we are all well and we start the delivery service ”, says the co-owner of Kabuki. “Our food gives us a bit of a 'withdrawal syndrome' so we thought it might work and we're doing really well. We're a little overwhelmed. It has been a surprise”, comments Ricardo Sanz.

From Kabuki Wellington and Kirei Las Cortes, they provide the delivery service with the brand 'Kirei by Kabuki' through "Deliveroo or, if not, by telephone to take it by taxi; each client asks for it as he wants ”.

The proposal is based on “an offer of sushi and sashimi, with restrained prices, such as a menu for one for 32 euros and for 2 for 70 euros. It's working pretty well." Dishes are served in Japanese containers “that close and snap together easily. The food is arriving quite well”, says the cook, who highlights that, in terms of the measures that Health can request, “we have had sushi factories for a long time; we work in uniform; we maintain food safety. We know how to do this well”.

About the future, “I imagine we will have to open with half capacity; people are going to have a hard time getting out again and going to a bar. It will take a few months to recover."

Daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter of a family of restaurateurs, Ada Parellada opened Semproniana in 1993, a restaurant in a former publishing house (which takes the name of her great-grandmother and Roman name of Granollers). In her permanent fight against food waste, she started her delivery service the day after the closure due to the state of alarm, "as a way to liquidate stocks." This is how she made her debut in the home delivery service: she cooked and her son delivered with his motorcycle. The success of the proposal, presented as "a neighborhood solution" has allowed it, with around 100 daily orders, to maintain the employment of two of its cooks and a cleaner (more information here).

On March 14, Ada Parellada launched her own home delivery service in Semproniana. “From one day to the next, I had this scare: we are 23 staff; we had full refrigerators, because it was the weekend; I had the feeling of emptiness and precipice. I did what I could with delivery; we had never done anything like this”, acknowledges the hotelier. “I sent everyone home; I stayed with my son and, since I had been with a big team for a while, it was hard for me to get the bucket back. But the Scarlett O'Hara that I had inside came out and we pushed forward. For Ada Parellada, “it is about facing a new challenge. It is another system, another type of cooking, with extremely complicated added difficulties”.

The initial objective of avoiding losing product was added to a double motivation: “people, especially older people, who don't know how to light a stove and that they do not have culinary resources”; and “seeing the need that the health workers had every day”, which opened up a path of solidarity through food.

This approach has given rise to adouble offer: menus for health personnel, served in hospitals and primary care centers, at a price of 6 euros, as if outside "a 'tupperware', based on a balanced and healthy diet"; and menus for individuals for €12. The owner of Semproniana, supported by local producers who are giving her food and for the sale of second menus , subsidizes the first menu format for toilets at a super affordable price. “I offered a menu subsidized by this house. Now, I have asked producers for help. Until now, the normal delivery is the one that helped to subsidize the menu of the toilets”, he says, with one more reflection: “I have a small kitchen because in Barcelona the rents are very high; I had gotten so used to the fourth win and now I have to peel 100 kilos of artichokes”.

With a daily service from Monday to Sunday, orders through two WhatsApp numbers and social networks and own delivery drivers, 80% of the total dispatched are for sanitary workers and 20% delivery.

He even admits that, in the early days, “I started doing gastronomic things with foies, lobsters or mini vegetables and, on the third day, I was already proposing daily menus . This is ‘war economy’ ; my weapons are a casserole and a cucumber”. Among the dishes on offer, there may be cauliflower gratin, lentil and apple salad, vegetable creams, cannelloni with béchamel sauce and ceps, baked fish, loin with onion or stewed chicken.

From the economic point of view, Ada Parellada acknowledges that “profitability does not exist and, now, I was scared with the end of the quarter. I am dead, I work many more hours than in the restaurant and we are 4 cats, but I am appealing to the fight to save food and to provide a service that helps each group", in the face of what he defines as "a change of scenery and bestial paradigm”.

Aida González and Safe Cruz obtained a Michelin star last November for Gofio, a contemporary Canarian cuisine space opened in 2015 in Madrid. When they were reaping the rewards of this distinction with a high level of reservations, the state of alarm forced them to close. Now, they are finalizing the launch of a delivery service: El Lagar por Gofio, a business format that they had been devising and preparing for a long time and which they consider now to be the best time to launch. They have experience in 'casual' formats with Cuernocabra, their 'second brand' in Las Palmas de Gran Canarias (Gourmet Experience area of ​​El Corte Inglés).

The owners of Gofio are about to launch El Lagar por Gofio, their delivery format, not only as a possible alternative to having the restaurant closed, but to anticipate what may come.

“A year ago, we created a delivery brand [with the help of Fanzine La Raya, Canarian designers based in London], but we never had time to prepare it. And, now, what we have is time”, explain Aida González and Safe Cruz.

They haven't started serving food at home yet; They are finishing off the web platform, the packaging and the entire organization. "Yesterday, we published the brand on social networks," they point out.

On the proposal, they advance: “Canarian cuisine with the Gofio seal for eating at home, closer and more popular. It is a very close proposal, more informal than Gofio, with less pretensions, a popular cuisine in our own way”. There will be a menu with several dishes (in part, supported by the Cuernocabra experience) and, on Sunday, it will offer a Canarian stew. "There will be surprises in the deliveries and for lovers of cheesecakes," they advance.

For the owners of Gofio, a key point was deciding the platform for home delivery. “For delivery, what mattered most to us was that it is a delivery service at home. All the food needs to arrive well. We have looked at many companies and we have decided on a local company that treats things with care, in the neighborhood itself [Las Letras], with bikes and motorbikes that consume little. We will centralize everything on the El Lagar website”.

Aida González and Safe Cruz identify the need to prepare for the reopening of Gofio as a reason to launch their delivery service. “We always thought it could be launched, but now is a good time because we have time to get it going and because, in the short and medium term, it will be whatever . The market is going to change. Delivery may be an option for the future. Even if we start it up due to this crisis, we will continue betting and maintain it. When we open, it will reach less public and we will have less capacity. Our profession is not to stand still. Restoration is a fundamental sector in this country”, analyze the owners of Gofio.

Peruvian cuisine concept opened by Chesko Salas and some partners in San Sebastián in the summer of 2017. When the hotel closure was decreed, they decided to maintain and reinforce the delivery service of sandwiches and Peruvian dishes, which had recently been operating at Ekeko, which operates through the Glovo platform, apart from having take away. "If we are going to die, we are going to die with the knife between our teeth, fighting, working," he says. In addition, Chesko launched on February 21 La Burger, a 'burger' project, which it now ships with delivery via Deliveroo and Glovo. With Paulo Airaudo (owner of Amelia, Da Filippo and 1985 Cantina Argentina), he prepares the opening of a taquería offering Mexican food: < b>1985 Cantina Mexicana, which will be released as a delivery format (more information here).

Chesko Salas acknowledges that “with Ekeko, I was always a little reluctant about delivery; He always tried to take great care of the product and felt that the final product was not going to reach the customer in the same way or not completely well. Therefore, I started quite late; I started in December-January, not knowing what was going to happen, not knowing how the world was going to move”. At the same time, this Peruvian hotelier was asked the option of opening another location in San Sebastián, where he opened La Burger, with “an offer of more Yankee, more American hamburgers, with a touch that I think that there was not in Donosti. With Ekeko's delivery experience, it almost started as a small 'pop-up', with a small proposal. We started a bit with the idea and all of this just happened”.

The Peruvian chef defines the situation generated as “a radical change that forced us to continue betting heavily on delivery”. This decision is influenced by staff and suppliers. “We had to enter ERTE and, therefore, many staff are not with me and we could not have our own delivery, so we continued with Glovo and Deliveroo with orders via app”, in addition to giving visibility to the offer on social networks and without ruling out that “due to demand, create our own system with a call center for the two stores and a Mexican canteen that we want to open with Paulo Airaudo ”.

Chesko Salas relies on two people in the kitchen, one in charge of Ekeko and the other from La Burger. About the offer, these weeks has been reduced. “We had prepared a menu to offer with a staff that could make that menu; now, it's a shorter menu. With the reduction of personnel, you have to cut many things like the 'mise en place' and the number of dishes”. The dishes are served in compostable packaging.

Regarding the suppliers, “many are not working, others are, but their suppliers do not bring them the product you ask for; Many products are coming to you, but not everything. Therefore, you also have to change some things.”

As a consequence of having less staff and perhaps supply problems by suppliers, the owner of Ekeko believes that “there is a lot to be done to be more efficient”. The innkeeper recalls that, despite the change in context, “all payments remain the same; you continue with the same responsibilities and let's move on. Happily, we are passionate people; I like things to go well; that passion is a good engine especially at this time. You need stamina and a lot of passion to keep going”.

In his opinion, “whoever survives will be more prepared for the future. This makes you better. It is an opportunity to rethink the way you approach the business and rethink many things. The fact that restaurants are adapting these formats will serve to reactivate things. When they are reactivated, formats such as take away will be important”, for example, as a way to eat outdoors, go to eat at the port or a park. The client has this habit of going out and eating; therefore, you have to give him facilities so that he can come and eat. A person in the future will come for a memory of the past”, he concludes.