Safe Entertainment and Dining Trends in the Shadow of Coronavirus

This is where the USA still has a distinct advantage as you can pretty much transact most things via Drive-Thru style operations. In other countries it's typically more fast-food outlets, while in America you can be married, divorced and buried courtesy of a drive-thru experience.

Iceland has had its 'Sjoppa' (Shoppa) culture for decades - sort of drive-thru 7-Eleven style convenience stores - where you could pick up various take-away foods and snacks - sandwiches, hotdogs and ice creams, confectionery - and daily supplies like milk and bread. Like 7-Elevens these are open for extended periods and easily accessible from the comfort of your car.

I fully expected the various UK take-away style businesses - the McDonalds etc. with their ready-made hatches and intercom systems - to largely continue throughout this time of Coronavirus. While most of them actually shut down as the interior space for the employees was too cramped to adequately accommodate those workers under social distancing guidelines.

This means various existing establishments will need to be amended and adapted with wider aisles and employee space - so that they can avoid standing shoulder-to-shoulder like they used to in those more cramped conditions.

I fully expect to see a real resurgence and growth in all manner of Drive-Thru services, with an accent on those hatches / hatch-ways and sills being increasingly made from or covered with antimicrobial Brass. In fact over the coming years I see a growing trend for Bar and Counter surfaces to be covered in antimicrobial materials.

The USA has led the way on Drive-Thru services, and we the rest of the world have often mocked the scale of this - while South Korea showed that this was an excellent medium for Coronavirus Testing - and the possibilities here are really endless.

Most supermarkets have a system of order-and-collect - and I see parts of that too transitioning more towards a hatch / drive-thru experience.

I have long been a fan of Home-Delivery food services - Deliveroo, Just Eat, Uber Eats and the like. I saw so many Deliveroo bikes in my neighbourhood that it became my main delivery route of choice - while it hasn't always served me faithfully (cold food etc.) it has nonetheless greatly simplified and expanded that aspect of my dining choices.

By and large most of those types of businesses have kept going throughout the pandemic - with pizza restaurants particularly prolific during this time. This ties into a second trend of 'Dark Kitchens' or more industrial style food preparation companies typically housed in warehouses on industrial estates. Most of these have more room to operate within - and everything made here is done on a delivery-only basis. A number of these supply larger restaurant chains with staples, while the majority do cook-to-order.

A recent BBC feature reported how several former sit-down restaurants have now decided to change to take-out only businesses - as their seated venues aren't conducive to safe eating environments. A lot of those spaces are fairly cramped with notorious bottlenecks and choke-points. While modern restaurants will need to be far more spacious - and have a set one-way system of throughput. In fact most restaurants cannot do social distancing properly - they are based on a single confined space of entry and exit - the toilet facilities are cramped etc. so just none of that is suitable really. For many businesses the viable alternative is to switch to take-away / delivery services only. It need not be a big transition - as there are already those myriad courier and delivery companies on-tap which are so essential to distribution - you can leave the logistics to them largely.

There has been an incredible growth in home delivery - with various services stepping in to provide take-away options where those have not necessarily been offered by those restaurants. Increasingly though the take-away / delivery route will become the default rather than the side-gig!

Some of you will already have seen various news features on the Amsterdam Mediamatic Restaurant with its 'Serres Séparées' mini greenhouse-like pods. This to me is an ideal route for seated restaurants to sort of be able to continue as normal while providing a properly safe space for their patrons.

Mediamatic does everything right - from the appropriate distancing of the pods to the mask-and-glove wearing serving staff - and how food is served largely on elongated boards / planks / paddles to help enforce social distancing guidelines.

I'm one of those who is in no hurry to return to seated restaurants at the moment. There are various considerations that need to be made in terms of obviously core social distancing - but the avoidance of choke-points and bottlenecks which might otherwise inadvertently force people closer together than they should be. You need to factor in toilet services and entrance and exit points too. Traditionally restaurants have had the same single point on entrance / exit - where people have been force to congregate in cramped spaces - that is no longer a viable option.

There will likely also be a pattern change to casual restaurant businesses where people were used to queueing for a table - or being sent to a nearby pub until their number came up. None of that is really viable any more - and so we will be back to a system of scheduling and reservations and time-slots.

Many will simply just choose to stay at home and order in - such has already been happening - and those Dark Kitchen style restaurant businesses will likely see the most growth in coming years.

For those who enjoy dining out - the pod-style system is the only way really that allows you to carry on doing that relatively safely.

Sporting events in general have been one of the most significant casualties of the Coronavirus Pandemic. All those pundit, opinion and banter sites and side-industries are currently running on empty - including of course sports betting too.

It's kind of fitting then that there has been an explosion in coverage of an altogether different sort of Sports Medium - Competitive Gaming or Esports as it's now commonly known. We've all read about teenage millionaire Fortnite competition winners - and when you can't watch live football and commentate on that - surely FIFA 2020 is the next best thing!

And while competitions have traditionally been held in arenas and fixed venues - there is no reason why people cannot dial it in from the comfort of their own homes. Esports has much of the same excitement as the real physical thing and is a current and evolving phenomena. It certainly hasn't fully hit the mainstream yet - but some of those sports cable channels have grown bored with showing re-runs of old events, and are now increasingly broadcasting Esport tournaments too.

This is certainly an area with huge potential, and while it may not please everyone - it can certainly service all those side-industries too which have been somewhat compromised and neglected of late.

This is all about Social Distancing and minimising unnecessary contact and likely risk vectors. Being safely cocooned in your own 'pod' is obviously the only properly safe option if you wish to venture out. Of course there is still nothing safer than staying at home.

However, if you want some semblance of 'Going Out Out' as Micky Flanagan would put it - you do need some form of protection to keep you as safe as possible. And that does mean there needing to be some sort of encapsulating pod dynamic - as mentioned - either a fixed properly spaced out structure or your own family car.

We will likely see quite a significant transitional period here - where businesses tool up and adapt to the new reality or fall by the wayside. There has already been a considerable trend towards home convenience - with all those myriad delivery services and that will all continue to grow.

Performance and Entrainment businesses will need to either reach more into the home - via online media, or reach more out into the open - with larger broadcast spaces - like those mentioned for Drive-In performance above.

Some of this was already trending in that directions as we've had Deliveroo, Dark Kitchens and Netflix for a while - and yet more types of businesses will need to go down those routes. People will be increasingly working from home too - so many more business will need to extend their reach into those homes - using both new and traditional means.

These next few years will likely see a whole lot more change and innovation though and significant evolutions of society and culture.