Where Do Restaurants Go From Here?
Women Who Travel | Condé Nast Traveler
Condé Nast Traveler
4.4 • 636 Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2021
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When we talked to Kopitiam's co-owner Moonlynn Tsai on the podcast last June, the reality of the longevity of the pandemic—and what that meant for her restaurant—was just setting in. Now, after nearly a year of pivoting to make do, creating outdoor dining, surviving the New York winter, and trying to keep her staff safe, she says running a restaurant feels about the same as it did in the pandemic's early days. She's just more tired.
This week, we're catching up with Moonlynn to hear more about those experiences—and what's giving her hope for the future. Also joining us is the San Francisco Chronicle's senior editor Serena Dai to chat about how we can think big to help support local restaurants, and what she would like to see from the industry on the other side of the pandemic.
Read a full transcript here: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/where-do-restaurants-go-from-here-women-who-travel-podcast
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, everyone. This is Women Who Travel, a podcast from Connie Nass Traveler. I'm Meredith Carey, and with me, as always, is my co-host, Salaira Koglu. |
| 0:12.0 | Hello. Few industries have been left unscathed by the pandemic, but there are even fewer that have suffered as hard as the restaurant industry. A year of lockdowns and ever-changing rules on indoor and outdoor dining and what even |
| 0:23.7 | constitutes outdoor dining have forced many to close, and those that are still soldiering on |
| 0:28.6 | have been forced to pivot in ways that wouldn't have been imaginable one year ago. |
| 0:32.6 | To talk to us about the current state of the restaurant industry and where it goes from here, |
| 0:36.6 | we're joined this week by Moonland Tsai, co-owner of New York City's COPM and Serena Dai, a senior features editor |
| 0:42.7 | overseeing food and travel coverage at the San Francisco Chronicle. Thanks for joining us. |
| 0:47.7 | Thank you so much for having us. Thank you. So apologies for teeing up this episode with a really |
| 0:54.1 | depressing string of sentences, |
| 0:57.0 | but it feels urgent and timely to talk about it all. |
| 1:02.0 | And Moonlin, we last spoke to you in June when the chaos wrought by the pandemic still felt relatively new. |
| 1:09.0 | All these months later, what has changed at Kopitiam and |
| 1:13.1 | what have you learned? So many things have changed and I feel like it's still changing almost |
| 1:19.3 | every day or every week. Last time we spoke when I was in June, we were kind of getting our |
| 1:24.9 | footing in where the pandemic, it was a couple months in and And at that time, we landed an account with Rethink New York. And so with that, we were making impact meals about 300 each day. And that was able to get our team by until recently. And we were really lucky where we were able to bring back the team that we furloughed, just really |
| 1:45.0 | pivoting in the most random ways. |
| 1:49.7 | I feel like it's been such a blur where it's been almost a year, but it also has felt very |
| 1:55.6 | short. |
| 1:56.6 | And just watching the team go through, you know, we have outdoor dining and then outdoor dining |
| 2:01.9 | is closed and then we never open for indoor dining |
| 2:04.5 | and just trying to figure out how to compensate for sales |
| 2:07.6 | in terms of that. |
... |
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