Richard's Rules for Restaurant Based Revitalization in the face of a pandemic

Focused on center cities, the original post from 2005, and subsequent entries focus on restaurants as anchors for commercial district revitalization, leveraging the fact that because (1) people eat every day; (2) restaurants draw people to come out and sample a place, even one that had been seen as gnarly; and (3) spearheading additional retail development; (4) based on a shared base of customers and cross-promotion.

-- "Richard's Rules for Restaurant-Driven Revitalization (updated)," 2005, is the basic piece, with five rules (below) and a list of elements denoting quality restaurants
-- "Revisiting Richard's Rules for Restaurant-Based Revitalization," 2010
-- "Updating Richard's Rules for Restaurant-Driven Revitalization," 2013
-- "DC restaurants, location and equilibrium," 2014
-- "Ice cream shops as commercial district activation devices," 2018

But even in the best circumstances, it's a tough business with narrow margins ("My Restaurant Was My Life for 20 Years. Does the World Need It Anymore?," New York Times) that have gotten only worse with:

(1) campaigns to increase minimum wage to $15 ("Higher minimum wage means restaurants are likely to raise prices and fewer employee hours, survey finds," CNBC)

(2) health insurance costs for employees (when offered)

(3) increased competition as areas improve and more restaurants open ("The problem with food tourism: the chefs fighting to keep their restaurants special," Guardian)

(4) higher rents as commercial districts improve and demand for space rebounds

(5) the rise of e-commerce and third party ordering and delivery platforms like UberEats ("It costs Uber Eats $43.5 to deliver a $40 food order," Menabytes) which capture a significant number of takeout orders diverting precious margins to the platform and away from the restaurant ("Viral Facebook Post Shows Just How Little Restaurants Make From Grubhub Orders," Eater)

That's without a pandemic.

The pandemic and restaurants.  The New York Times writes, "As Restaurants Remain Shuttered, American Cities Fear the Future," about fears that restaurant closures will have significant negative impacts on urban revitalization on two dimensions, on commercial district revitalization and on how cities have leveraged restaurants as a way to promote tourism.

Sadly, I have to agree.   While many restaurants have pivoted towards takeout and delivery, and may even sell groceries including harder to find items, sourced from their wholesalers, it's doesn't fully replace lost business nor employ as many workers.

A restaurant in Singapore.

Until people feel confident going out in public, restaurants aren't going to get a lot of business, especially given findings that ventilation systems can spread the virus quite easily.

And because of social distancing requirements, they will have to reduce restaurant capacity, which further reduces potential profits and the need for employees ("Restaurant owner and Trump appointee says social distancing not practical for restaurants," CBS News).

This will be devastating for restaurants, commercial districts, and cities.

Plus, property owners won't reduce rents by 50% even though space utilization and therefore revenue generating  potential is reduced, and it will take some time for cities to lower property assessments if this becomes a longer term condition.

In the meantime many restaurants have announced they won't be reopening ("A lot of restaurants are already permanently closed," Restaurant Business).

And buffet style restaurants seem likely to close ("Souplantation's buffet-style restaurants closing for good," San Diego Union Tribune), although a documentary ("Covid-19: Battle on the Cruise Ship") on NHK analyzing how the virus was spread on the Diamond Princess cruise ship indicated that a switch to a more cafeteria style set up, with food dished out by staff would eliminate virus spread deriving from the current configuration.

Ad promoting Houston to potential visitors as an exciting restaurant destination.  

Culinary tourism as a phenomenon.  Tourism is a key economic development element for most major cities in the era of post-industrialization.  Before the pandemic, cities like Chicago and New York hosted many tens of millions of visitors annually.

And cities like DC, New York City, and even Providence, Rhode Island promoted food tourism quite heavily as part of tourism marketing campaigns ("The Future of Food Tourism Goes Beyond the Restaurant Experience," Skift).

Food is a key element of the visitor experience, especially because "we eat every day" and dishes can be quite memorable("Food, tourism, and culture: the keys to success of a global trend, TrekkSoft)

Culinary tourism benefits a city more than individual commercial districts.  We should differentiate between  "culinary tourism" for a city or region and "restaurant-based revitalization" at the scale of the commercial district.

Categorizing restaurant districts.  While there are plenty examples of one-off destination restaurants that aren't part of larger districts, I've outlined five primary categories:

(1) regional and touristy-serving, like Downtown and Georgetown, but also Alexandria and now The Wharf district in SW DC, probably the Ballpark District/Navy Yard

(2) center city/metropolitan serving, like 14th Street NW, Adams-Morgan, U Street NW, and H Street NE in DC, or Bethesda and Silver Spring in Montgomery County, Maryland

(3) day-time office district serving (which can be a "daypart" distinction for regional and center city districts that serve different market segments at night)

(4) larger neighborhood serving districts like Dupont Circle, Capitol Hill, Columbia Heights

(5) smaller neighborhood serving districts like Old Takoma in Takoma Park Maryland, abutting DC.

One of my favorite one offs in the DC area is Black Market Bistro in the old train station in Garrett Park, Maryland.  That restaurant serves the area, Montgomery County mostly, while Inn at Little Washington is a national phenomenon, "Haute cuisine in a tiny town," Virginia Business).

Commercial district patronage overall versus individual restaurants.  While culinary tourism drives business for individual restaurants, I don't think it works to help commercial districts all that much, as I've written here:

-- "An update to Richard's Rules for Restaurant-Based Revitalization on the failure of wine bar restaurants in DC and Baltimore," 2018
-- "Destination restaurants as a call for revisiting "Richard's Rules for Restaurant-Based Revitalization"," 2017

Basically, local residents eating in local commercial districts are more likely to also shop at other establishments in the district, while out-of-neighborhood visitors, from within the city or metropolitan area or tourists, are not.

And that is what I zeroed in on in the very first post, which was a response to a Philadelphia Inquirer article and someone else's blog post, focusing on destination restaurants as a driver of commercial district revitalization. I disagreed. My counter point is that to get people to sample what had been neglected and underutilized neighborhood commercial districts, restaurants were key, but you had to focus on serving area residents, and develop them into repeat and frequent customers.