Issue #1 | Restaurants, Meatless, Metamodernity
By Jeffrey Dong
industry | restaurants
For those who’ve seen Stranger Things on Netflix: there’s no place like the Upside Down. An alternate dimension hidden from sight, the Upside Down is a dark, cold reflection of our world. It is a place of rotten decay, a shelter for monsters to creepily roam and prey on those that live above ground. With each season emerges a new antagonist, a monster that co-exists with humans and forces both worlds to collide. It seems as if the heroes and heroines of Hawkins, Indiana have finally come to their senses and accepted the reality that this dimension of the underworld is here to stay.
This fictional world is analogous to what we’re dealing with in our times. Except our monster is COVID-19. The victims bearing the brunt of this new reality include service workers and restaurant owners. With their world unexpectedly flipped upside down, it’s more important than ever to upend businesses that are on the brink of collapse and provide moral and financial support. Fortunately, several organizations have dedicated fundraising platforms to help those in need.
James Beard Foundation
The James Beard Foundation created a relief fund to financially support small, independent restaurants across the nation who are in immediate need for funding. Although the world may seem to have come to a halt at once, restaurant owners need to keep paying the bills from going out of business. The money collected from corporate, foundation, and individual donors will be provided to restaurants in dire need in the form of micro-grants.
Here are some key figures:
$1,000,000,000,000: estimated revenue generated per year within the culinary industry
16%: percentage of the American workforce employed by the food and beverage (F&B) community
Help Main Street / Bailout.nyc
NYC is home to many of the tastiest culinary delights in the world. For those who can leisure and escape into the bustling streets of the city are fortunate to experience the vibrant food scene; many rely on it to live. Restaurants in NYC are in rapid decline, as everyone is socially distancing themselves from the general public. Many owners are expected to close shop in the coming days or weeks, and those who work in the industry are left to seek other avenues of financial aid to support themselves. Help Main Street and Bailout.nyc help to provide an alternative source of relief funding for restaurants & service workers based in NYC. There are 25,000+ restaurants that employ over 300,000 people in the city; you can purchase gift cards online or donate to service workers via Venmo or GoFundMe to help provide cash support for your favorite local restaurant.
Here are some key figures:
27,000: estimated # of restaurants in NYC
$51,600,000,000: estimated sales in NYC’s restaurants (2018)
500,000: # of people working within tourism-dominated industries like hospitality, restaurants, and ride-hailing services estimated to be unemployed from COVID-19, at least
27: number of days on how much of a cash buffer an average small business has
16: number of days on how much of a cash buffer an average restaurant has
Feed the Frontlines Boulder
Inspired and initiated by entrepreneurs in Boulder, CO and San Francisco, Feed the Frontlines Boulder connects local restaurants to healthcare workers. The platform lets the general community donate to the cause, primarily funding meals from local restaurants who need business to hospital workers who need nourishment. This program could be replicated and mirrored in your neck of the woods, so if you want to create impact and help your local community, you can follow their playbook.
📍 Quick peep on what’s happening on the other side of the world:
In China, apparently, life does persist after COVID-19. In Beijing, business is slowly resuming, though it’s not business-as-usual yet. Foreign travel restrictions and post-travel quarantine rules are still in place, as the government is proactively trying to avoid a second wave of infections. Getting a temperature check is the norm in many commercial districts. Most importantly, people can start looking forward to getting their broken Macbooks checked at the Apple Store.
However, everything’s far from as-usual for restaurants.
Regulations over dining establishments are still a gray area. For example, restaurants are required to place physical limits on occupancy and social distancing, yet some are adhering to them more so than others. The mix of unwritten rules and misalignment in precautionary guidelines between restaurants paints a downbeat picture for those trying to get back into business. From a customer’s POV, there isn’t a sudden urge to eat out and share spaces and foods. Because of this low demand and lingering anxiety amongst customers, many restaurants remain closed or rely heavily on delivery. The sad reality is, regardless of the new post-virus safety measures, the damages to the Chinese restaurant industry at large seems irreparable. If the outcome (or outlook) of China’s F&B industry serves as any indicator, the rest of the world should take note and start preparing themselves for, what could be, the new normal.
foodtech | meatless
The Rise (and Plateau) of Beyond Meat
About a year ago, Beyond Meat started to make headway on Wall Street; it was the first plant-based, meat-alternative company to go public. Going meatless has been the rage amongst those wishing to shift towards a more flexitarian diet. Regardless of whether you’re trying to save the environment or finally address your poor eating habits, it seems definite that these plant-based products will become ubiquitous in supermarkets and restaurants around the world. So if you ever feel the desire to eat healthy while you’re eyeing down the McDonald’s menu next time, know that you’ll have more than just the salad option.
The company has seen a rollercoaster performance on its stock price since its IPO. After debuting what was deemed the most successful IPO in 2019, Beyond Meat brought the hype for meatless products to life. Investors were speculating, many buying into what they believe was the future for Big Food (or Big Meat), without hesitation. At its peak in July 2019, its valuation skyrocketed to nearly $14 billion; that valuation was twice the size of Macy’s and Gap’s! It traded at around 100 times sales and 300 times cash, which was a far cry from the relatively healthy multiples most blue-chip tech companies like Microsoft and Apple were trading at.
However, as the saying goes, what goes up must come down. After much speculation and lack of justification for its valuation, investors started to capitalize on their gains and book profits. A bucket of locked-up shares held by founders, employees, and private investors during early funding rounds was unloaded on to the market, further sending shares in a downward spiral. Other plant-based meat start-ups (Impossible Foods), lab-grown meat ventures (Memphis Meats), and big traditional brands (Tyson Foods) saw the potential and broke ground into creating their own meatless product line. These events culminated into what was a perfect storm, and if such factors weren’t prophetic enough to further derail the company’s stock price, the pandemic was definitely the cherry on top. In times of uncertainty, companies like Beyond Meat, who are overexposed to the overall perishable food sector, are wrestling with the rapid fallout amid the coronavirus outbreak, sending shock waves down the value chain. When it’s near the end of the world, who’s running towards the refrigerated meat(less) section anyway? Although the company’s banking on its long-term growth prospects to carry out its legacy, its early heyday seems to be over for the time being. Hopefully, we can expect a good comeback story in the not-too-distant, post-corona future.
The True Value of Breaking the Value Chain
In addition to innovating consumer products, the traditional value chain is being turned upside down. Over the past several decades, the industrial meat industry has been bolstered by large meat-processing conglomerates that own large acres of farms, feedlots, and meatpacking plants. By partnering with (and controlling) the middlemen who move the feed down and through the supply chain, meat companies together have radically transformed how meat is produced, processed, and scaled. Such ground-breaking innovation paved the way for cheap, accessible meat. However, after many Netflix documentaries, docuseries, satires, and exposés later, the definition of business-as-usual could change for meat-processing companies.
With the rising success of alternative protein comes the demise or stark change in current meat production processes. Plant-based food suppliers are cutting the middlemen out of the equation and building clean meat labs where they can facilitate R&D projects. It kills two birds with one stone by: 1) reducing the environmental damages associated with meat production and 2) cutting out the controversial process of slaughtering animals in the value chain. Seems like innovation has a different tune to it today vs. a century ago. Saving face and keeping customers are key to Big Meat establishments. Their investments in the meatless future prove to be measures not only to rectify themselves, but to maintain their market positions and find the next goldmine in the budding $85 billion industry.
The Silver Lining Playbook (for Meatless Meat)
If there’s any underlying hope during these tumultuous times, it’s that those who are optimists and opportunists now will prevail once this is over. During its humble beginnings, Alibaba fought its way through the dot-com bubble, reached its miles-long milestone to profitability, and had ambitious plans to grow beyond China. Then, it faced a similar predicament we are seeing today in our side of the world. The 2003 SARS outbreak was unprecedented in China’s history and financially implicated both small businesses and large corporations alike. It was life or death for many. What could have destroyed the company eventually paved and cultivated the future for the $500+ billion global tech conglomerate it is today. As summarized from Porter Erisman’s book “Alibaba’s World”, Jack Ma, co-founder and then-CEO of Alibaba, rallied the troops, spoke with comforting words of encouragement and purpose, and brought the team much closer together than ever before.
The takeaway? For every crisis, there’s opportunity. From venture capitalists to successful entrepreneurs, powerful players are preaching a similar word. Game-changing companies will prevail in the wake of the coronavirus aftermath, and it’s not about when, but how.
Reeling it back into the case for Beyond Meat, CEO Ethan Brown discusses the company’s aggressive plans to expand in Asia this year with the introduction of its first production plant in China. Instead of backing out from its operational investments and steering away from potentially weak market sentiment towards meatless meat, Brown believes this is a “time of hyper-growth” for the enterprise, as disruption in the region is inevitable. Similar beliefs are shared with other regional and local competitors like Impossible Foods and Zhenmeat, as they make inroads into the Chinese market. Time may seem like a social construct for many who are in confinement, but time is of the essence for those who seek to find opportunities and break industries.
thoughts | metamodernity
I’m grateful for the “Recommended Songs” feature shown underneath my Spotify playlists. Now that I have more time on my hands, I’ve been going on a listening binge to find my next go-to jam. As of late, I’ve been bumping to Vansire’s Metamodernity (thank you, Spotify), which has a melancholy yet reminiscent tune to it. The song mirrors my days of day-dreaming and thoughtless mind traveling as I’m stuck within the confines of my bedroom.
Being the intellectually curious and busy person I am, I freed up some time to dig deeper into what the term ‘metamodernity’ meant. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the term can be defined as the state of being modern (modernity) while also undergoing change (meta). Makes sense. The Minnesotan band went as far to describe it as “an attempted philosophical reconciliation between the grand romantic narratives of modernism and the self-deprecation and irony of the postmodern era.” Definitely makes sense.
As we continue to battle through this global clusterfuck of a pandemic, we should take the time to count our blessings and help those where we can. Fortunately, we have the technological capacity through online social networks easily at our disposal to help support the frontline workers (hospital staff, grocery workers, food delivery couriers) who are actively working to serve our needs. During pre-corona times not too long ago, tech giants were fighting their way out of what seemed like a copious amount of lawsuits regarding monopolistic behavior and unethical data aggregation practices (just to name a few). Now, we’re living in the midst of the corona-times, and we’re seeing these tech companies work together to accomplish what they were intended to do in the first place: bring people together. I never sought to romanticize modern technology in its current form, as we’re all more aware of the unethical data privacy practices and the detriments to mental health. Yet, I’m hoping, in the post-corona era, we’ll see a new precedent for how modern technology is being used and applied to in non-dire situations.
In other news, if you have other song recommendations, please send them my way. I’m not sure how much longer I could listen to Vansire.
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