The rapid spread of home food delivery services has largely spawned a variety of new food and beverage companies, but what does this mean for their space design?
#疫情下的设计展望
Disruption and innovation in the catering industry
Long before the COVID-19 pandemic caused concern, the number of uniformed delivery riders outnumbered diners in takeaway stores, a phenomenon that has long been commonplace. Their colorful uniforms mark competing brands such as Uber Eats, Deliveroo, and Foodora (in China, meituan, Ele.me), and new, direct-to-consumer food delivery platforms have transformed the home dining market and opened the door to high-end restaurants that typically only serve on-site diners. In short, takeaway ordering has gone far beyond pizza delivery.
The sudden boom has prompted many companies to worry about missing out on the opportunity to share the pie, and to join the feast, leaving no chance to even assess what a distribution-oriented foodservice model should look like – both spatially and procedurally.
First of all, if consumers are not really customers visiting physical stores, but dealing with food and beverage brands through the intermediate link of the delivery platform, what does this mean for brand interaction? Restaurants need to rethink their entrances, which have long since become veritable canned sardine conveyor belts. And will the constant flow of takeaway traffic affect the interest of foodies who want to stay here all night? In addition, the potential impact of social distancing under COVID-19 needs to be taken into account.
Deliveroo (from the UK) has invested heavily in the emerging takeaway kitchen sector, making it a global leader in the field. The brand initially opened "dark kitchen" under the name Delivero Editions to complement restaurants seeking low-cost expansion, but the move was criticized. For chefs, those containerized shacks equipped with industrial kitchen equipment are in poor condition and extremely inconvenient for kitchen operations.
In 2017, Sarah Butler wrote in The Guardian: "These boxes have no windows, a lot of chefs work with their doors open and you can see them stirring huge pans or flipping burgers inside." However, the consumer is unaware. All they do is tap the screen to order food and get their favorite hamburger to appear at the door. When ordering food from the comfort of their couch, their minds imagine places they frequent.
Deliveroo's latest delivery-oriented concept has risen from the ground floor to the high street, suggesting that the brand wants more brick-and-mortar stores to enter the space – a less censored approach than the "dark kitchen" mentioned by The Guardian. But there is no doubt that such kitchens are still in operation. It's worth mentioning that picking up meals also seems to be an important factor, which means connecting with customers through these spaces.
For example, in Wan Chai, Hong Kong, restaurants operate on a high street designed by 3stories, a London-based social organization. After customers order a meal on Deliveroo's app, they can unlock their own heating cabinet to pick up when food arrives. Customers can also place orders through in-store iPads and watch the food being made through VR headsets while waiting. Does this gimmick encourage visitors to participate in the preparation of meals? Will it instill a sense of security in response to health concerns raised by the COVID-19 pandemic?
Jordan Littler, founder of 3stories, said his team's strategy was to "strip away the core of traditional takeaways, maximize visual impact, and make it easier for new and existing customers to understand the services offered." The design also takes into account the concept of scalability to make it easy to roll out across multiple sites around the world, with or without staffing. The logo is kept simple, allowing each restaurant to gain customer recognition through its own brand strategy. Deliveroo continues to expand its Editions footprint, with inquiries and expressions of intent from its catering partners alone since the beginning of 2020 that have tripled compared to 6 months ago.
As delivery becomes synonymous with convenience, food retailers that once represented convenience are expanding their range of services. For example, Starbucks has launched a new store model of "Starbucks Now" and incorporated its trademarked "Starbucks Delivers" concept.
The world's first "CaféStarbucks Now" store
The delivery service was originally launched as a pilot project in partnership with Uber Eats in late 2018 and is scheduled to be rolled out across the U.S. this year. The world's first "Starbucks Now" store is located in Beijing and aims to provide a convenient experience for customers and riders. There are a small number of seats in the store, which allows enough space for people who come to pick up or deliver meals. While Starbucks baristas are at the counter to greet customers and assist with ordering, delivery riders head to the dedicated area with pick-up entrances.
Thankfully, the market is not limited to large multinational corporations, which provides more room for experimental and design-led solutions. For example, two young restaurant entrepreneurs in Milan opened Ktchn Lab, a restaurant that only offers takeaways, as an attempt to combine business and design.
Studio Arme designed Italy's first "ghost kitchen" to have the temperament of a clinic and a theater. The choice of materials meets or exceeds hygienic standards, while the translucent sun partition interacts with the figure of the kitchen worker hiding behind it to create an interesting "shadow puppet play". There's also a subtle but important detail – the oversized front door, which is used to alleviate crowd congestion during meal pickup.
The most recent case is from iTafe in China. After Daylab designed the first concept store for iTafe and was very successful, the retailer, which only sells tea, coffee and bread, commissioned the studio to design two more stores for it, which were positioned only to provide take-away and delivery services, and called it ITAFE UP.
Pictured: Yunmian Studio
In Yiwu Wuyue Plaza, interactive QR codes are combined with mobile devices, and QR codes can be placed anywhere in the store, but also in surrounding shopping malls and even anywhere in the community. Considering the impact of online shopping on consumption habits, the concept of Douxi Design (Daylab) is basically assembled by components ordered on Taobao. For example, radiator fittings for large electronic components form aluminum grille facades, while other industrial machinery components are reassembled to form QR code scanning devices, Visualizers and public seats.
The knock-on effect of this phenomenon is the rise of the virtual catering concept, a brand that only offers takeaway delivery. It's no surprise that the founder of The French food and beverage delivery brand Taster was once an employee of Deliveroo. In an article last year by TechCrunch, veteran contributor Romain Dillet explained, "To scale up faster, Taster isn't renting expensive stores. ”
Instead, it "relies on third-party companies, such as CloudKitchens, which was founded with the investment of Travis Kalanick." Deliveroo itself is also behind some virtual brands, arguing that it "provides consumers with ultra-personalized and convenient dining options, while saving businesses on high storefront rents and the cost of hiring employees, allowing partners to focus more on innovation and the gastronomy itself."
Senior contributor to Romain Dillet
Before the coronavirus crisis, Morgan Stanley predicted that food and beverage delivery had a good future. According to a report by the investment bank and financial services firm, digital food and beverage delivery may account for 11% of the entire market by 2022, compared with only 6% in 2017.
Restaurant Ktchn Lab
This may just be the beginning. "If restaurant-food digital delivery is combined with Whole Foods, which Amazon is acquiring, it can quickly form a pattern: people work from home, weekly groceries and daily dinners are delivered to their doorsteps, and they eat before tv (ordered online) that plays popular movies or TV shows — all from the same supplier."
For now, though, reality contradicts reporting. A Reuters article noted that some of the world's best-known large food delivery companies, including Just Eat and Uber Eats, have been hit hard in France, Spain and the United Kingdom, with the average number of daily users in March down 2% to 23% from the previous two months. The Guardian, on the other hand, reported an 8.7% increase in takeaway and fast food sales. In any case, people around the world may be eager to return to physical stores again after experiencing social distancing, even if it comes with risks, but we don't want to wait for food like in canned sardines.
Text/Tracey Ingram
图/Daniel Murray Studio
Translation/Longbow
Proofreading/Fruit
Editor/Book