Restaurants are finding ways to make up for lost holiday season business. NBC 7’s Claudette Stefanian has the story.
Restaurants have been pushed to the brink. Few have had it easy, but Thanksgiving is now bringing on a new set of challenges.
Customers typically flock to restaurants for Thanksgiving, but this year the pandemic has brought the restaurant industry to a screeching halt forcing many restaurant owners to devise new ways to make the holiday work or bust. Some now entertaining the idea of Thanksgiving takeout.
For some restaurants in San Diego, to-go orders are a pretty typical holiday option to offer customers. The pandemic hasn’t thrown a wrench in their usual Thanksgiving plans.
However, restaurants NBC 7 spoke with Friday say they were taking on the Thanksgiving take-out option for the first time and entering unchartered waters.
Mille Fleurs Restaurant said they were still planning on maintaining their outdoor dining experience this holiday and but will take part in Thanksgiving takeout for the first time, saying customers phoned in wanting to stay safe.
“Because of the demand, we had a huge demand, a lot of people don’t want to go out,” Bertrand, owner of Mille Fleurs says.
But Mille Fleurs wasn’t the only establishment tackling takeout.
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Parc Bistro-Brasserie says their dining room is usually packed to the brim with customers on Thanksgiving and is usually one of their most profitable holidays, but this year, they decided to switch things up entirely and do takeout only.
“Only takeout, yeah, so we’ve completely flipped our model because in the past on holidays we don’t offer takeout,” Samantha Scholl, general manager of Parc Bistro-Brasserie said.
She says the transition has forced her team to get creative and involves a lot of working parts. However, shutting down the sit-down portion this holiday was the best option for her and her team, a new alternative worth navigating with the potential to bring in more customers than she could with limited dine-in only.
“We only have 15 tables on the patio so, usually when you’re doing 300 people in a restaurant and you move to 15 tables on the patio, you can only offer service to a certain small select group of people so we felt with takeout we can service pretty much everyone in the community,” Scholl said.
