Restaurants adapting to survive
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 1 September 2020
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Catering and hospitality are among the sectors worst hit by the global coronavirus pandemic, with many governments banning in-house dining. Manuela Saragosa speaks to New York Chef Anna Klinger, who owns and manages Al Di La, a Trattoria in Brooklyn. Ka Yi Ong who runs Mini Star, a Singapore eatery that specialises in stinky tofu tells us about its new and very successful delivery service. Michelin-starred chef Kevin Meehan of Kali restaurant in Hollywood explains how a creative make-over for his parking lot is helping business tick over and Elizabeth Hotson visits Coupette, a high end cocktail bar in London where manager Andrei Marcu is delighted to be mixing champagne piña coladas for drink-in customers. Plus, we hear from Richard Vines, chief food critic at Bloomberg News in London. Producer: Elizabeth Hotson. (Picture description: A food vendor wearing a face mask at a hawker centre in Singapore by Roslan Rahman).
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC with me, Manuela Saragossa. |
| 0:08.3 | Coming up, catering amid the COVID pandemic. |
| 0:11.6 | All of our plates were different and pretty and had flowers and all sorts of things on them, |
| 0:15.4 | and now it's craft paper-colored cardboard plates. |
| 0:18.6 | How restaurants, bars and cafes have been adapting to survive. |
| 0:22.6 | We had to wear masks inside of a really hot kitchen in Southern California in the summertime, |
| 0:26.3 | and it's not fun. |
| 0:27.7 | And it's survival mode. |
| 0:29.4 | That's coming up here in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:44.2 | Monday night at Cupet, a popular East London bar. |
| 0:48.2 | It's busy, which is surprising, not because it's Monday, |
| 0:54.7 | but because of the coronavirus pandemic and all the social distancing and health restrictions in place here in the UK. |
| 0:59.2 | So what's going on? My colleague Elizabeth Hotson went to find out. |
| 1:05.8 | Cupette is considered to be one of the best cocktail destinations in the world. |
| 1:10.0 | But like every other bar in the UK, it was forced to close in March. |
| 1:14.3 | Walking past on my daily commute to work, I wondered how it would survive. |
| 1:19.1 | It's got no outside space and it's all about intimate service and atmosphere. |
| 1:21.7 | Surely it couldn't continue to operate. |
| 1:28.4 | But behind the scenes, bar manager Andre Marceau was doing everything he could to keep the business afloat. |
| 1:34.5 | Once we felt it's safe enough for our staff to be back in the venue and to be travelling to work, |
| 1:39.4 | myself and our head bartender Tiago, we came back into work and we started making a plan. |
| 1:50.0 | I'm a local, I live four or five minutes down the road, and I noticed that as soon as you're allowed to, you started doing takeaways and deliveries. And I saw that you were offering some of your signature drinks. |
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