How to Save Your Restaurant? Serve More Than Food

<p>We get it. Custom made meals served in biodegradable bowls and ordered through an app or over a sneeze guard are really good and really convenient.</p><p><br></p><p>And plenty sell each year—the fast casual sector posted an 8% sales gain in 2018, and traffic jumped 3% in the space despite the fact that total U.S. foodservice traffic was flat as a board. You can thank a confluence of factors from the ’08 financial crisis to rising rents for the industry’s recent ascent.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>But not even the fast casual space,</strong> home to relatively fast, relatively cheap, and relatively healthy food we’ve seamlessly integrated into our lives and diets, is safe from COVID-19. The sector, much like fine dining and the rest of the hospitality space, has been brought to its knees by shutdowns designed to keep us all safe...and at home.</p><p><br></p><p>So today on <em>Business Casual</em>, we’re exploring what makes fast casual tick, what’s changed since the coronavirus set in, and what comes next for the Chipotles of the world. Most importantly? We’re pinpointing <em>exactly</em> what it is that helped fast casual thrive through the last recession—and determining which of those lessons can help us get through today.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>This episode features two entrepreneurs in different stages of building their businesses: </strong>Nicolas Jammet of famed salad company Sweetgreen and Chef JJ Johnson of Harlem’s new(ish) rice bowl shop Fieldtrip.</p><p><br></p><p>We decided to bring in not one, but two experts to show differing perspectives on building moats around a business.&nbsp;</p><ul><li>For Nicolas and Sweetgreen, the biggest competitive advantage is white label tech that’s made the chain the envy of both fast casual restaurants and Silicon Valley alike.</li><li>For JJ and Filedtrip, the biggest competitive advantage is a tight-knit community that’s served as the best marketing tool imaginable.&nbsp;</li></ul><p><br></p><p>The insight the two bring...to the table...is unbeatable. They