explain dishes, share stories and answer ques- tions. It becomes a communal experience and a bit of performance art all at once. Then, in a truly karmic way, the guests are asked to fill out feedback cards to evaluate each course and share them with the chef.
As of now, the supper club is in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and at select venues in my own hometown of Philadelphia.
Did I mention this idea’s a
brilliant one? I wish I had thought of it!
It’s been almost twenty years since Open Table pioneered online bookings, and it’s obvious the market is continuing to burgeon as technology grows while diners continue to grow up.
Sure, today’s marketing buzz word is and has been Millennials - companies and whole indus- tries seeking to capture the 22- to 37-year old consumer segment - but by this time next year look for the next Madison Avenue catch-word to infiltrate our society...
Call it “Gen Z” or define them as post- Millennials, either way, my seventeen-year old daughter and her teenaged friends are about to become the new trend in target market con- sumerism. So, what does this mean for the restaurant industry and for online/app booking systems?
Here’s a peak: Future diners, like a growing segment of today’s patrons, will be seekers of experientials, and this is sure to continue within the realm of dining out - meaning the act of dining out will be more significant than simply booking a reservation and then going to the restaurant or, more precisely, they’ll search out places where more excitement is being offered than the simple act of masticating a meal.
Today’s escape rooms or dining rooms featuring bowling allies or ax throwing lounges or ping pong tables will become community showcases and agencies of change - dine at Restaurant Z and create a political movement or discuss social consciousness; form a coalition to help feed the poor (or any other chartable aware- ness), or a collective for literally any sort of interest.
I also see communal dining experiences to con- tinue to uptick. According to Buzztime, trends are skewing more toward group dining, so tomorrow’s restaurateurs should consider
adapting by creating seating situations which offer more than the typical four-top or small pri- vate room.
I haven’t yet touched on two other ever-growing segments of the dining strata - food trucks and food delivery - but I see their impact most every single day in the office buildings I work in as a concierge.
In fact, I’m constantly booking food trucks for my tenants who gobble up their fare with wild abandon, and I am amazed by the increase in food and beverage deliveries coming into these buildings on a daily basis. Thus, if my corporate clientele are arbiters of the food service indus- try, then it stands to reason they’ll crave more conveniences to hasten the whole quick-serve process.
Another trend within the corporate center - and at our homes, as well - is delivery service. I’ve never seen more Amazon deliveries before and, on that note, the shipping/retail/food service (via Whole Foods) behemoth is sure to continue to lead the way in what, where, when and how we received their goods. Expect Amazon to enhance point-to-point connections between us and them.
I joke how today we share an elevator with the Amazon courier, and how tomorrow we’ll be sharing the elevator with the Amazon drone.
But this futuristic idea will become a reality soon enough. The Jetsons-like whirl of the sky
copter bringing you your Big Mac is sure to affect us all.
The most significant growth I see (because I’m so excited by its prospects) is food adventurism: book your dinner here in Philly or over there in Bangladesh. Sure, this sort of foodie wayfaring is already in place. As digital connections link with advances in transportation (thank you Elon Musk and Richard Branson!), clicking your way to a culinary adventure will become much more common and more communal, meaning, the more people paying for an excursion, the more cost-effective it will become.
I see only one downside to this ever-increasing digitization to dining: it will continue to make a marked impact in the hospitality industry by negating that original booking service called the concierge.
From the profession’s beginnings in European hotels in the late-1920s to the advent of Open Table at the turn of the last century, my col- leagues were always the point-people to gain that “in” when none existed, creating the special restaurant experience and helping to provide those added touches and enhancers at the restaurants they had supported.
The dining app certainly has changed much of this for hotel guests, and the concierge is quick- ly becoming obsolete. The guest’s rationale: “Why should I let someone else do it, when I can book it myself?”
I continue to encourage my colleagues to remain as old school as possible by doing what we’ve always done - create amazing relation- ships with key restaurant people, pick up the desk phone (remember the desk phone?) and call those fine folks and maintain human con- tact with the living, breathing staffers who run the restaurants instead of clicking a button on a computer or favoring a place simply because your points are being doubled.
At this moment, there are two distinct emails in my inbox: one is a request for the restaurant Prime at The Bellagio in Las Vegas (“Ken, I tried Open Table, but there’s nothing available this Saturday night at 7PM.”), and the other is a request for Zahav, considered one of the tough- est tables in Philadelphia (“Ken, I tried Open Table, but there’s nothing available…”).
By going old-school, I was able to quickly get my clients into each one because I made the effort to bypass the app and go directly to the source.
Long as I keep doing so, I’ll hopefully remain secure in my job. When I start to kowtow to the computer alone, I’m done for.
But you won’t be, because the future is looking so very bright within the wonderful world of din- ing. We can click the app, sit at the table, and enjoy the meal.
Hopefully, though, the electronic reservationists of tomorrow will stop short of eating the actual food for us.
Ken Alan is a corporate concierge for CBRE.
He is the founding member of the Philadelphia Area Concierge Association, and the restaurants editor
for Main Line Today
magazine.ken.alan@
cbre.com Mid-AtlanticEVENTS Magazine 97
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