Takeout Food By Athena Nassar

Takeout Food

By Athena Nassar

With the rise of the pandemic, dining has gone from making toasts at a round table and sharing an intimate moment with your closest friends to sitting alone in your kitchen on a Friday night. Although we may not be able to have all of the company that we desire, eating good food is a little luxury that we can still enjoy, especially if we’re aware of all the local gems. Although we may not be able to go out to eat with a group of friends during this time, local restaurants are doing everything in their power to safely bring the dining experience to us. The restaurant industry has been hit hard by COVID-19, but restaurants that have switched to primarily doing takeout orders have managed to stay afloat. As a college student, I know it can be tempting to fall into the routine of ordering pizza every night, but here is a list of takeout restaurants in the Boston area with vibrant, ethnic dishes that are just as reasonably priced as a box of pizza: Vejigantes (Puerto Rican), Vaanga (Indian street food), Pai Kin Kao (Thai), Black Seed Cafe & Grill (Middle Eastern), Genki Ya (Japanese), Lucy Ethiopian Cafe, Beneventos (Italian), and P&R (Jamaican). If you’re willing to splurge or are celebrating a

“While these restaurants still managed to remain open, the majority of them had to reduce their staff by at least 50 percent ”

special occasion, Ostra, an upscale restaurant that specializes in Mediterranean cuisine, is also a delicious option.

While these restaurants still managed to remain open, the majority of them had to reduce their staff by at least 50 percent, and some restaurants had to suffer a much larger cut according to Food & Wine Magazine. When I asked an employee at Genki Ya about the severity of these cuts, she admitted that Genki Ya went from 40 employees to a measly eight. As a result of the pandemic, restaurants have lost well over eight million employees, and that number is on an upward trend.

Even restaurants like Genki Ya that have shifted to solely takeout have been greatly impacted. These numbers from the restaurant industry alone are equivalent to the amount of jobs lost in the 2007-2009 Great Recession.

According to The Center for Hospitality Research at Cornell, the cost of employee turnover averages at around $5,864 per person. The majority of this cost accounts for recruiting, training, and productivity loss.

With this shift in employment, there has also been a shift in what customers are expecting when they order from takeout restaurants. In these unprecedented times, customers are craving familiarity. Since they are spending the bulk of the day in their homes, customers are more inclined to order comfort foods that they can eat in the comfort of their own beds or while watching TV in their living rooms.

In an interview with an employee at Pai Kin Kao, the employee revealed that stir fry noodles and pad thai are the most in-demand dishes of the pandemic. Being that I now spend most of my time in my college dorm, I find myself ordering pad thai two or sometimes three times a month. Similarly, in a recent interview with the restaurant

“In addition to undergoing twice as many inspections, takeout restaurant employees have also limited themselves to getting takeout as an alternative to going out.”

manager at Vaanga, he disclosed that the most popular dishes on their menu are the chicken combos, which consist of chicken marinated in spices and jasmine rice. In order to survive this pandemic, I can confidently say that customers, including myself, are turning to foods that give them a full, satisfactory feeling: slow-cooked chicken, noodles, rice, potatoes, creamy soups, pies, and so on.

So what’s stopping customers from making home-cooked meals? What are some of the steps that these restaurants are taking to reassure customers that it’s safe to still order food from their restaurant? In addition to undergoing twice as many inspections, takeout restaurant employees have also limited themselves to getting takeout as an alternative to going out. As reported by an employee at Genki Ya, “the life of a staff member is now work then home, work then home, and repeat.”

Even with their staff’s extreme change in lifestyle, Genki Ya has still lost a big portion of their clientele. In attempting to please worried customers, Genki Ya and other takeout restaurants have lost the business of their worldly customers. These clients are often traveling from afar and searching for a place to dine in. Being that Genki Ya has transferred from providing 24/7 dine-in service to solely takeout, that dine-in experience that certain customers are searching for isn’t something that they can offer at the moment.

Although the restaurant industry has been the hardest hit industry by COVID-19, lovers of flavorful, multicultural food, can still find ways to support them and get them through the worst pandemic since the Spanish flu of 1918. When we’re craving chicken curry, pad thai, rice and beans, bolognese, or any other cuisine, there are still an abundance of restaurants that we can turn to in the Boston area to satiate this hunger.