Food & Wine USA - (07)July 2020

JULY 2020 71

TOO

SMALL

TO

FA I L

The

pivot

diaries

How F&W Deputy Editor Melanie
Hansche and her husband turned
their restaurant into a grocery
store overnight

MARCH 13: It’s Friday the 13th.

I’m not superstitious, but it’s

been two days since the office

at my day job closed ... due to a

global pandemic. My husband,

Jason, and I sit down with our

team at our favorite brewery. We are the only customers, and we’re

pretty rattled—there are over 1,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in

the U.S., and the president has declared a national emergency. We

smash pizza and beer for comfort and brainstorm ways to keep our

restaurant, Tucker, afloat if the shit really hits the fan. As a daytime

café in Easton, Pennsylvania, that has an average spend of $15 per

check on avocado toast and a flat white, our business wouldn’t

survive. We collectively come up with a plan B and plan C, as well as

contingency plans for staff who want to stay home with their families.

MARCH 14: New York state has mandated that restaurants operate

at 50% capacity, so we preemptively remove half our seats, reducing

the number to 24. We post a team photo on our social media channels

to let our community know what sanitation measures we’re taking

to keep them safe. We’re all wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the

phrase “Try Not to Worry,” but in truth, we’re terrified.

MARCH 15: Rumor has it a shutdown of nonessential businesses is

imminent. Jason starts to talk in earnest about how we’d fare if we

were limited to takeout and delivery only. We drink too many martinis

and come up with a radical plan D.

MARCH 16: We pull the trigger on that plan first thing in the

morning with a completely new business model. Instead of serving

our customers avocado toast, we prepare to sell them the sourdough

from our baker, Matty; avocados from our wholesale restaurant

supplier, Baldor; plus other essentials and indulgences we think

our customers might want. As a restaurant, we’re set up to do this

surprisingly quickly—we have a supply chain, cold food storage, and

food-safety protocols in place.

MARCH 17: We open with a limited takeout menu to sell the fresh

food left in our fridges. Jason builds a new online ordering site from

scratch using our Toast point-of-sale platform, which we hack to

sell groceries. We place orders with our regular suppliers to arrive

the next morning and rearrange the restaurant into a grocery store.

MARCH 18: It’s go time for Tucker Provisions, a digital community

grocer. We lock the doors and slide paper bags out a window onto

a six-foot table for contactless pickup. Being in a small community

surrounded by supermarkets helps our cause because panic buying

produced by OSET BABÜR AND NINA FRIEND illustrations by ABBEY LOSSING