These are tough times for restaurants.
If the pandemic's rolling lockdowns were not bad enough, independent eateries now find themselves caught on a conveyor belt of crises: inflation, labour shortages and high rents. That’s without mentioning the post-Covid agoraphobic “hermit consumer", who prefers to hunker down indoors than splash the cash on going out.
The Food Chain investigates how restaurants can turn their fortunes around and make it all work.
If the stats are to be believed 60% of restaurants fail in the first year, 80% after five. And yet despite the long odds many are still seduced by TV dramas like The Bear into turning their passion for cooking into a business. We hear from some of the best in the business for a steer on how to keep this labour of love alive.
David Reid speaks to leading restaurant critic Jay Rayner, culinary specialist Ashley Godfrey, top chef Joseph Otway and restaurant operations manager, Sam Wheatley as they lift the lid on the trade secrets they have accumulated from years on the restaurant front-line. The programme also asks what a world without independent restaurants would be like and what we as strapped consumers can do to save the flagging middle of the restaurant market from going under.
Presenter and producer: David Reid
(Image: A waitress lays a table in a restaurant. Credit: Getty Images)
Plundering the planet under cover of coronavirus
Coronavirus: Obesity's defining moment?
The preppers and the pandemic
The fertiliser that blew up Beirut
Margarita Forés: My life in five dishes
Sean Sherman: My life in five dishes
Food media's moment of reckoning?
Meatpacking's coronavirus problem
Single parents: Cooking solo
Dominique Crenn: My life in five dishes
Does comfort food really comfort us?
Asma Khan: My life in five dishes
Jacques Pépin: My life in five dishes
Losing your taste to coronavirus
Is lockdown good news for fish?
Antonio Carluccio: My life in five dishes
Coronavirus: The survival business
Has the crisis made us more generous?
Is our food creating pandemics?
Should China ban 'wet' markets?
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Global News Podcast
Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4
The Infinite Monkey Cage
Great Expectations
Gulliver’s Travels
You’re Dead to Me
Elis James and John Robins