 The pandemic of 2020 has leapfrogged the restaurant industry 10 years in the future in less than a year. With this extreme reshaping restaurateurs need to probably completely change how they run their businesses and adapt to rapidly changing consumer demand and behavior. One of the good questions to have is how to meet the rise in delivery demand. Everything from internal POS systems, marketing strategies, and common business practices are all very rapidly evolving. For example, estimates are that up to 60% of U.S. consumers are ordering delivery or takeout at least once a week. The result is that on top of potentially shifting to ghost kitchens, restaurateurs need to reevaluate how they approach their delivery game. It’s a new world out there is upon us and now is the time for an entirely new restaurant experience. My high-level thoughts about food trends that the pandemic accelerated 1. Industry-Wide Shift to Delivery-Only Restaurants are definitely shifting to delivery as demand continues to rise. A few ideas come to mind, such as the need to implement new systems and processes to make room for fulfilling online orders; or the need for ample restaurant kitchen space for preparing and fulfilling online order; ensuring a seamless experience for drivers and customers. But the most important: planning for more online orders helps classic restaurants prepare for the shift to delivery-only: re-evaluating the menu, for example, are there items that don’t travel well or package well, in other words making room for the menu items that make the most sense for a delivery-focused world. 2. Technology-First Online differentiation is a must when most orders are made from an app. We’re really post yelp here. So restaurants need to know tech real well, understand all delivery trends, be able to position their brand online and on delivery marketplaces well – leverage Doordash, Uber Eats and GrubHub, to maximize your reach and convert them into new and repeat clients. 3. Off-Premise World It’s really clear to me that off-premise food businesses will continue to thrive. Consumers are relying more and more on online food delivery and it’s becoming a new normal to have a wide variety of options available on delivery apps. Although some customers may begin to return to dine-in once protective measures have been lifted, the convenience of online delivery will remain a staple in customers’ lives. Delivery will be treated as a separate business given that people all over have realized just how convenient and safe delivery really is. 4. Less Restaurant Space With the shift to an off-premise world comes less of a need for a large restaurant space for dine-in customers. For example, quick service restaurants and fast-casual chains have even started designing new restaurant layouts that are leaner and more focused on pick-up and curbside-to-go options versus traditional on-premise dining. With less real estate space needed to meet delivery demand, I think ghost kitchens will be rising in popularity as they come with the perfect turnkey solution for online delivery. 5. Ghost Kitchens Ghost kitchens allow restaurateurs to expand their reach through each food delivery app. They’re strategically located where the most online food orders are taking place. And since they’re not focused on high foot traffic, that means the real estate is less expensive too. With the rise in delivery demand, the shift to a delivery-first model might become vital to stay ahead, and very soon, restauranteurs will be using ghost kitchens to create seamless delivery systems that leave customers at home happy and realy loving the food. 6. More Digital Marketing, Less Traditional In a pre-covid world, restaurants have to heavily rely on foot and as a result focused more on traditional marketing to reach your customers (think yelp?) but as of now, digital marketing is in, restaurants need a strong digital presence and soon, without a physical storefront, entirely shift focus to digital storefronts. But here’s the really good news: shifting to a digital marketing focus helps reach customers where they already are, and it’s way more easy to leverage key insights into customer behavior and data, meanwhile with more online customers, the demand for off-premise dining will continue to expand in the year to come. Let me know what you think!
DM me @philippemora on IG and Twitter My name's phil mora and I blog about the things I love fitness, hacking work, tech and anything holistic.
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 We all know that industry insiders are usually so myopic that they don’t see the obvious. Uber vs. Taxis. Blockbuster vs. Netflix. Nokia vs. Apple. So who’s the Amazon that is going to disrupt Ag? I am thinking that at least we have an innovative path looking at vertical farming as a small part of the solution especially because of higher yields and a lower environmental impact. What are vertical farms? Basically those are farms that grow crop in vertically stacked layers indoors, optimize plant growth and often incorporate soil-less farming techniques. With climate change and weather out of the equation, and with using state of the art LED lighting tech, vertical farms can produce consistent, high quality yields year-round with minimal waste and lower CO2 emissions compared to traditional farming methods. The aim of indoor vertical farming is to produce more crops while using less space thanks to a controlled environment. Benefits
Drawbacks
Vertical Farming Companies Because of their growing popularity, more and more vertical farms are starting to appear, here a 2 of the biggest in the world. AeroFarms: AeroFarms is one of the most successful vertical farming companies, recording more than $130m in investments since its launch in 2004. The farmer uses its own patented aeroponic technology, which provides higher levels of precision and productivity, with little environmental impact and minor risk. Based in New Jersey, AeroFarms claims its methods use 95% less water than standard arable farming. Bowery Farming: Launched in 2015, Bowery is one of the fastest-growing start-ups in the sector, funded at $140m. Headquartered in New York City, supplies several restaurants, uses zero pesticides and non-genetically modified seeds in its operations. Bowery Farming claims its methods use 95% less water than traditional agriculture and are 100 times more productive on the same amount of land. Let me know what you think!
DM me @philippemora on IG and Twitter My name's phil mora and I blog about the things I love fitness, hacking work, tech and anything holistic.  I have been in product management for half my career and today, product management is a function that is found in almost all companies. Product team members are today involved in all aspects in the product lifecycle and are considered, (and rightly so) as the CEOs (and COOs) of the product. But it wasn’t always like that. Product Management is actually a very young function compared to more traditional roles. So where did the field come from? Let’s explore how product management was born. Product 1.0: “Brand Men” Since the industrial revolution, it’s arguable that product management has existed for as long as there have been products to manage. But it was never a formal role until the 1930s when Neil McElroy at Procter and Gamble wrote a 800-word memo in which he described a new role he called “Brand Men”. As outlined in the memo, the “Brand Men” would hold responsibility for the brand. They’d oversee the management of the product, including its marketing and sales. If the product’s branding was weak, it was the duty of Brand Men to research why and devise a strategy for improvement. This is historically the first example of a brand-vertical organizational structure: every branded product from a company could have a dedicated budget and team behind it, and so a fair shot at market success. That year, McElroy hired the first two product managers in history. Product 2.0: Hewlett Packard Following his memo and his success, McElroy went on to do some advisory work at Stanford University and this is where he met and inspired Bill Hewlett and David Packard – who would go on to further the evolution of product management. Indeed, Hewlett and Packard interpreted the evolution of “Brand Men” as putting decision-making power as close to the hands of customers as possible. The customer-centric approach was born and it became known as “The Hewlett-Packard Way”: Brand Men, aka Product Managers, would act as the vessel for the voice of the customer. They would inform the development of the product based on customers’ needs and desires. Toyota Everyone knows Toyota invented Kanban, which is today adapted to agile software development methodologies and super popular in high tech. But do you know how this went by? At the end of World War II, companies in Japan were suffering from drastic cash flow issues. These issues pushed a few innovator companies to develop “Just In Time” production and manufacturing. One of those companies, Toyota, formalized this lean manufacturing trend and invented the “Toyota Production System” – a system combining waste reduction in production processes with two essential values:
Both kaizen and genchi genbutsu are now major components of Kanban product management. And back home in the U.S., Hewlett Packard heard of these Japanese lean manufacturing practices and in turn incorporated them into their product management system. Product 3.0: the tech industry Until the advent of the tech industry in the 60s and 70s in Silicon Valley, product management remained predominantly a marketing capacity focusing on brand and a customer-centric approach. But with lean manufacturing and the emergence of the semiconductor industry in the 70s in California, product management spread past marketing and into development. As the industry matured and shifted away from semiconductors into software in particular, a separation between development and marketing efforts proved problematic and product management expanded to fill the gap. It combined the understanding of the market, brand and customer with the development of the product. As a result, product managers could ensure that the values of a product aligned with the values of the customer. Today Ultimately, it’s been the advent of product management as a role in the tech industry and especially software over the past 12 years that made the field what it is today – the management of a product from its inception until the end of its life. Today, product managers follow the values of kaizen and gentsuba, using data to optimize the product to achieve business goals. The must understand and know the voice of the customer inside out as much as the limitations and abilities of their developers. Product Managers are the ones that look after the product from start to finish. They understand that developers need time to code. They make decisions about what features should and shouldn’t make it into the product — from a place of understanding the customer needs. And they collaborate with marketing, sales and customer service, and shape the overall user experience of the product. Ultimately, it was this uptake of product management as a role in the tech industry that made the field what it is today. That is, a field that involves governing a product from its inception until the end of its life. Today’s product managers follow the values of kaizen and genchi gentsuba. Their goal is to optimise a product to achieve business goals. They must understand the voice of the customer, as much as the restrictions and abilities of their developers. In other words, the product manager is the one that looks after the product from start to finish. They understand that developers need time to code. They make decisions about what features should and shouldn’t make it into the product — from a place of understanding the customer needs. And they collaborate with marketing, sales and customer service, and shape the overall user experience of that one product. Let me know what you think!
DM me @philippemora on IG and Twitter My name's phil mora and I blog about the things I love: fitness, hacking work, tech and anything holistic. Head of Digital Product thinker, doer, designer, coder, leader  When the pandemic first sent office employees home last year, knowledge workers and managers didn’t know what types of interactions they needed to succeed. I am reproducing this fascinating article from Kristen Senz at Harvard Business School because it really resonated with me and the experience I have had working with my teams remotely for more than a year. A lot of non verbal cues are not only missed but most importantly many times misunderstood, which in a corporate setting can lead to disaster. The Harvard research points to “bounce time” for example, which doesn’t exist really in a virtual setting. Executives are starting to envision post-COVID collaboration in organizational cultures reshaped by remote work. Research by Leslie Perlow, the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership at HBS, and colleagues sheds light on the interactions that were lost during the pandemic’s early weeks, and how teams adapted or faltered. The findings also hold practical implications for managers struggling with low engagement and inefficiency amid a lack of face time and continued pandemic stress. “One of the big insights from our work has been that, just because you went to the meeting doesn’t mean you know what happened,” explains Perlow. “The more senior people assume that the more junior people understood the meeting because they were there.” In reality, while technology makes it possible to invite more and different people to virtual meetings, the lack of spontaneous “huddle time”—quick post-meeting conversations to process what just happened—can leave some attendees in the dark about nuances and next steps. The researchers also found that switching from on-site to remote work reduced “bounce time,” a term they use to describe impromptu brainstorming sessions. The disappearance of bounce time stunted innovation and caused content discussions to intrude on meetings scheduled for other purposes. “Grabbing a marker and sketching ideas together on a whiteboard—that's much more difficult in the virtual environment,” says Ashley Whillans, assistant professor at HBS and co-author of the study Experimenting During the Shift to Virtual Team Work: Learnings from How Teams Adapted Their Activities During the COVID-19 Pandemic, which will appear in the journal Information and Organization. Perlow, Whillans, and HBS doctoral student Aurora Turek interviewed 51 knowledge workers at a professional services firm from April to June 2020 to chart teams’ interactions as they transitioned to remote work. The name of the firm and its industry are confidential, but its teams routinely traveled together to visit clients prior to the pandemic. Drawing on past research about collaboration, the study identifies three categories of interpersonal interactions essential to knowledge workers and looks at how teams tried to facilitate them. They include: At the office, the teams studied would often sit together and discuss content or projects, providing feedback about ideas and early iterations. Like with bounce time interactions, these “content interactions” were usually spontaneous, so the shift to remote work made it difficult to give and receive early input. In response to these challenges, the teams found that using asynchronous communication tools—specifically, Slack or similar messaging apps—helped compensate for the lack of spontaneity. Moreover, the researchers suggest that this change could permanently improve team collaboration, even when teams reunite in person, by giving individual members more time to think through their responses. To compensate for lost bounce interactions, the teams used synchronous communication tools, such as WebEx or Zoom, to simulate in-person work conditions and brainstorming. Even with these tools, it took time for teams to adapt, the study says. The researchers quoted one of their study subjects in the paper as follows: “In the first project, we didn’t have a virtual team room, and didn’t have a rhythm for working together and organizing our work,” the interviewee said. “In the second project, we had a smoother teaming process because we tried to relax the norms around communication, do more virtual brainstorming, and allow for more personal autonomy over the work.” Process interactions: Prioritizing quality over quantity In terms of agenda-setting, Perlow, Whillans, and Turek found that balancing the quantity and quality of process interactions was critical for teams as they adjusted to remote work. In an office, it’s easy to ask a manager or colleague, “When is this due?” or “Who’s working on that?” Without those informal interactions, teams often went too far, scheduling too many meetings to touch base. “They would have check-ins and check-outs, and then that process time would start to get usurped and there would be other kinds of interactions happening within it,” Whillans says. “Process time started to become content conversations because teams were not getting as much feedback during the day.” With so many check-ins, burnout became a real concern. Over time, teams discovered that using Slack or minimally disruptive technologies for process questions helped them achieve balance. Relationship interactions: Connecting through huddles, not yoga The importance of nurturing social relationships has come sharply into focus during the pandemic, as often isolated coworkers communicate exclusively online. Spontaneous socializing in the office helps build bonds, and “huddle time” offers opportunities to learn from one another. When these interactions could no longer happen organically, teams started scheduling them. Virtual drinks, team dinners, and yoga sessions became opportunities to learn more about colleagues than was possible in the office, as videoconferencing offered glimpses into people’s home lives. But as they interviewed employees at the firm they studied, the researchers found that scheduled social time tended to feel forced, and not everyone was interested or able to attend. Still, those who participated found the experiences worthwhile, even if they fell short of past in-person gatherings. Not all social time is the same, however. “Huddle time” helps workers understand the team’s work and context. For teams that valued these “hallway conversations,” especially after meetings, and made an effort to replicate them online, “the results were striking,” the researchers write. “The challenge of replicating ‘hallway’ conversations via digital communication led interviewees to realize that these conversations were more than ‘downtime’—it became apparent that these conversations helped the team qualify their thinking,” they write. Short, scheduled debriefs after client meetings helped team members process what transpired and the work that needed to follow. Moving forward in a virtual world By labeling the types of interactions a team needs and tracking the quality of scheduled time, managers can systematically improve collaboration, the researchers write. “There’s huge inefficiency in so many meetings, and it became even worse in the virtual world,” says Perlow. “So, how can we think about, what are good meetings, and what are less-effective meetings?” Inevitably, various types of team interactions co-occur or overlap. Perlow says she and her fellow researchers are continuing to examine those intersections and ways that different technologies can improve team collaboration long term. “When we go back to the new normal,” says Perlow, “now that we better understand that you need these different types of interactions to work well together as a team, can we figure out how to do them more effectively?” Let me know what you think!
DM me @philippemora on IG and Twitter My name's phil mora and I blog about the things I love: fitness, hacking work, tech and anything holistic. Head of Digital Product thinker, doer, designer, coder, leader |
i blog about the things I love: fitness, hacking work, tech, Experiences and anything holistic.
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