One way to save restaurants: Work where you eat

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Amy Rosen is a freelance journalist and cookbook author.

By now, most of us realize things aren’t going back to normal any time soon and some of us will probably be working from home for awhile yet.

This got me thinking: What are the options for office workers used to gathering for meetings and brainstorming sessions? Where to hold the water-cooler talks and team-building experiences? What to do when we finally succumb to Zoom fatigue? In other words, where is there enough space for co-workers to safely gather while their office spaces are temporarily off-limits?

Here’s one possibility: Restaurants, bars and food halls have enough room to create co-working spaces that can be pre-booked and time-allotted. A meal, a meeting and a boost to both morale and the hospitality industry. In other words, there’s never been a better time to bring back the three-martini lunch!

In England, they’re calling it “pubworking” – a way to help newbie home workers cope with their newfound loneliness. As someone who’s been a freelancer for most of my career, I’m accustomed to lots of alone time. Having always dealt with editors over e-mail and the phone, the adjustment for me has been negligible. But when I did work in an office, I loved the camaraderie – the whiteboard meetings, the group lunches, competitive snack smack-downs and after-work drinks. And part of my freelance lifestyle has always included daily or evening meet-ups with friends and workmates, so even I suddenly miss the water cooler chat. Talking about Tiger King or the Raptors over FaceTime isn’t nearly as satisfying as discussing it over a postwork beer.

The good news is some of these chats can now take place at The Chickadee Room in Juke in Vancouver. Co-owner Justin Tisdall says that when the pandemic first hit, they were inundated with calls from companies doing simultaneous take-out orders for 20 workers at 20 different addresses so they could all “eat together” during Zoom meetings. That was step one, he says. Step two involved building out their small space while focusing on the idea that people would soon want to gather face to face in a safe and meaningful way.

“Right now we have about 16 seats so people can rent us out for lunch,” Mr. Tisdall says. “They have their own space and we have dividers between the tables so they can even socially distance within their own group.” The staff wears masks and gloves, and is behind Plexiglas.

It’s contactless ordering, too: Food and drinks are ordered from a smartphone app and there are drop stations on each table. The cost for a buyout during the day starts at $500 including food (beer, wine and cider are extra), and if you want some added team-building fun, you can request a bartender and they’ll shake up some nice cocktails.

“We see it as a way that you can get co-workers interacting safely while people are still apprehensive about going out,” Mr. Tisdall says. “When we were doing the build-out we thought, how can we make things more safe and secure and relaxing for them? It wasn’t to promote sales, it was about doing the right thing.”

For the most part, strategy meetings over steak suppers have long been replaced by sad desk salads in our modern go-go era, but not so at The Rights Factory. In lieu of a bricks-and-mortar office, long lunches with teammates is how chief executive Sam Hiyate says his literacy agency has always gotten the intimate time needed for strategizing “and feeling close to co-workers and clients rather than using weird online tools.”

Mr. Hiyate’s business is one where face to face is the norm and he’s been back to Café Diplomatico and Bar Centrale in Toronto for patio lunches. “I’m trying to do weekly restaurant meetings now.”

It’s an idea that’s growing. The Flexday app, a Toronto startup that launched in 2017, seems almost prescient now. The idea behind it is that during restaurants’ typical downtimes (which have increased to almost always during the pandemic), empty tables at restaurants transform into workspaces. Users pay a monthly membership fee or can opt for an unlimited Flexday plan for $99 a month – less than the cost of a month’s worth of lattes. For harried parents who have been booking themselves into hotel rooms to get work done, this seems to be a more tenable solution for safe, productive meetings.

Much is lost when meetings are held digitally instead of in 3-D. Especially in a group situation, where eye contact and focusing attention on one team member can only really happen in person. Facial expressions, gestures and body language aren’t as obvious on the computer screen, and digital lag time is commonplace. Miscommunications increase and joyful camaraderie decreases.

And while you may find yourself more productive without the dreaded desk drop-by interruptions, suddenly, you also find yourself wistfully missing them. Who would have thought we’d grow nostalgic for Phil from accounting?

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