When he started planning the opening of JuJu, a modern Korean eatery in Copenhagen’s Kartoffelrækkerne neighbourhood, chef Kristian Baumann knew from the beginning that the restaurant would only be open from Monday to Friday. Saturdays and Sundays would be for him, his partner, and his team to enjoy the weekends with family and friends. “For the first time, we could consider the chance to attend all the family events, birthdays, and weddings. To have a life more similar to that of many people who are not part of this industry,” he says.
Working in a restaurant usually means being on duty every weekend, often on a double shift. On hectic days, it’s almost impossible to have a Saturday night off, for example, when most people are socialising and celebrating their lives. “I lost count of how many important moments of friends and family I missed. I just concluded that it made no sense to keep going like this,” says Baumann.
Open every weekday for lunch and dinner, JuJu is a casual venue serving unfussy yet well-elaborated Korean dishes meant to be shared family-style: kimchi, mandoo (Korean dumplings), noodles, fried chicken wings, and BBQ ribeye. With a reduced staff and an unpretentious service, Baumann calculated that it would be possible to have an income that allowed the business model to work without depending on weekend revenues.
Today, he says, the priority has been to have a life outside the restaurant. “I can spend more time with my wife and my parents, who are not so young anymore,” explains the former chef at Noma’s renowned 108 restaurants. “Our staff seems content as well. They were very confused in the beginning since it’s not a regular move for a restaurant”, he adds.
Baumann says the new version of his celebrated restaurant Koan, to be opened this winter at a new address in Copenhagen, will follow the same path. “To open a business, we plan the menu, the wine list, the service, everything. So why not put the lifestyle we want to have into the equation? Why can’t we redefine the pillars that will shape a restaurant to fit our needs as persons?”
Like JuJu and Koan, more businesses — from Barcelona and New York City to Paris and Rio de Janeiro — are following the decision to not open between Saturdays and Sundays, in a movement that has grown as the restaurant industry re-evaluates the working conditions of its employees. The goal, this time, was not driven by government impositions (as at the height of the pandemic), but by a staff shortage and a reflection that should transform the way restaurants work.
Chef Enrique Casarrubias no longer remembers what it’s like to work in the kitchen on Saturdays. When the yellow vests (gilet jaunes) protests hit Paris in 2018, his Michelin-starred restaurant Oxte, near the Champs Elysee, was forced to close its doors on weekends due to demonstrations and clashes close by. “We had virtually no guests,” he says.
Then the pandemic arrived, and with it a crisis that made it difficult to find staff. “People have rediscovered the pleasure of spending time with their family, and have realised that working in restaurants is very taxing,” he says. To give them a better option, and to help find more motivated people to join their project, he decided to continue closing on weekends. He had already tested it and it seemed economically feasible.
Mondays have been profitable since most of the guests are business people looking for meeting spaces. “It’s also a good day for sales because the employees are more motivated after spending the whole weekend at home,” he adds. For the chef, the administrative routine, which used to be done on weekdays, has to be carried out on weekends, which forces him to work on Saturdays or Sundays. He says it’s when he can perform some “business owner roles”, like opening a restaurant for the cleaning company. “Their work is more expensive on weekends, but we find a way to balance the costs. It has been worth it, as our staff are happier,” says Casarrubias.
Since August, Enigma, in Barcelona, run by trailblazing chef Albert Adrià, is no longer opening on Saturdays either. The restaurant officially reopened in June after being closed for many months due to the pandemic, and the dissolution of the chef’s partnership with his former partners had to adopt the double shift model to handle the number of guests. “We decided that it was necessary to close one more day so that we could rest properly,” says Adrià.
The decision, he says, was voted for democratically by the entire team. “We gave the option of working from Monday to Friday or Tuesday to Saturday. The first option was almost unanimous among all.”
As the restaurant welcomes a lot of tourists, working on Sundays or Mondays didn’t make a difference regarding bookings. “But for the team, it means a lot to spend the weekend with family,” says the chef, who believes the trend of restaurants closing on weekends is gaining traction. “I only wonder if, in the future, if many follow, people will have options of where to eat on Saturdays and Sundays,” he says.
They will. But guests will only have to be willing to pay more for it. Reservation services worldwide have tested a dynamic pricing model in restaurants, where prices rise with demand. That is, on the busiest days, such as Saturdays, platforms would allow restaurants to charge more to reserve a table — as is the case in hotels, airline tickets and even transportation apps. Revenue management is coming to the restaurant industry: restaurants have a fixed capacity, so keeping tables filled with guests is a good goal for businesses that can manage peak and off-peak times.
“Of course, at first, people will feel strange and not accept it very well, but it is something that will happen in the long term”, says Damien Rodière, Western Europe general manager for The Fork, a global platform that is set to carry out tests with partners. With more restaurants embracing technology, with the aim of automating processes, dynamic pricing is easier to implement across booking channels.
“People know that restaurants are more popular on weekends, and they should understand that having a table on a busy day can cost more. I do not doubt that many people will pay for it and that the practice will be more acceptable as it becomes more common,” he says. This may be the case, especially if we consider there could be fewer restaurants open to the public on weekends.
Source: Fine Dining Lovers
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