Every day, the hunger pangs of millions of Americans are triggered by big neon icons that loom above interstates and dominate busy intersections. The signs have all the impact of a television set, telling us in no uncertain terms: ”Time to eat! Time to eat!”
It`s fast. It`s easy. You don`t even have to get out of your car. Dining habits have changed in America in the last generation, and among the biggest shifts is that we like to open a package and find a ready-made meal inside. Carryout food is here to stay.
Compared to carryout, other trends like tapas and brew pubs have all the importance to the marketplace of indoor soccer. So it`s no wonder that finer restaurants are telling us that they can cook meals for carryout and delivery, too. Many are doing it. Some find that it is a significant and growing part of their business.
Fancy restaurants have fancy notions about carryout. They say that affluent families have busy lives and two incomes and want great food without having to sit in restaurants or labor over stoves. Another theory is that the electronic age, with the popular VCR, has led to evenings with old Fred Astaire films and chicken marsala in the microwave.
IMPULSE SHOPPING
But the truth behind gourmet carryout is probably something closer to a basic rule in merchandising: Make it fast, simple and expensive. Carryout and delivery make patronizing an upscale restaurant the closest thing to impulse shopping. And it has made some restaurateurs who have succeeded at it very happy.
Convito Italiano, on Chestnut Street and in Wilmette, is one of the best at carryout trade. In each location is a chic restaurant with foreign-sounding specials, fine wines and solid service. But Convito is also a grocery, and each day it serves scores of people with carryouts from glittering cases on sleek tile floors.
You can go on a shopping spree for lunch or dinner. With daily specials, it might be osso buco or simmered veal shank, at $6.98 per pound, which might need reheating when you get home. Or for something you could eat in a cab, there is cold chicken breast in salsa verde at $11.59 per pound. Baked pasta, breads, soups and salads are available, all displayed along with wines, dry pastas, groceries and even great-looking cookbooks.
Shopping and dining in (almost) a single step-this idea is being used by several other Italian restaurants as well. In Northbrook Court, Pomodoro sells carryout salads, lasagna, eggplant and other dishes in a small cafe that also features sauces and fresh pasta that you can take home and cook yourself. Also, Carlucci, on Halsted Street, has converted its gelateria into a storefront with colorful food on display for carrying out or eating in at one of the few small tables in the window.
Creating a restaurant cum grocery is only one option for restaurants that want part of the carryout business. Another approach is to take foods that have long been delivery items, repackage them for folks who prefer fancy boxes to paper bags, and set up in a high rent neighborhood.
FROM TOOTHPICKS TO NUTS
Randall`s RibHouse, 41 E. Superior St., has an extensive carryout and delivery operation, with a separate storefront that deals just with this part of its business (accounting for more than 20 percent of revenue). Meals, mostly baby back ribs, are boxed with everything from toothpicks to mints, and the people manning the phones have been known to call patrons while they are eating to make sure everything is all right.
Chicken is common carryout food, but common is not the word you`d attach to R.D. Clucker`s on Clark Street. Clucker`s has a delivery service with fare that includes chicken with various sauces (such as honey mustard and pesto), a few blackened items and popular entree salads. Business has grown nicely, but Clucker`s boss, Reid Merdinger, says making delivery food as special as restaurant food is difficult. ”You like to do everything you can to make each customer happy,” he says. ”But it can be a nightmare and a half.”
How do you get people to think of your place as convenient as the golden arches? It takes work. Merdinger, for example, printed clever flyers with photos of chickens dressed up as yuppies. He distributed them in high rises, at train stations and in law offices in the Loop.
Indeed, the carryout/delivery for office workers is a market worth cultivating. When the Levy Restaurants got the contract for restaurants in Sears Tower, they were most astonished by Eadie`s Kitchen & Market, where they serve 3,000 to 3,500 customers a day for breakfast and lunch. Everything from eggs, pancakes, bagels, sandwiches, pastries and ice cream is packed up and taken back to the office.
The potential for the business carryout from the world`s tallest building was also behind something that the Levys call Chef`s Express. While individuals can get sandwiches or enchiladas at the restaurants, Chef`s Express will do a small-scale catering job for six or more, with dishes from any of the restaurants in the building.
Seafood salad from Benchers, Mexican items from Dos Hermanos or submarine sandwiches from Mrs. Levy`s Deli come from Chef`s Express and go throughout the Loop area, with 24 hours notice. The idea for this service, says a Levy spokesperson, started with a modest proposal to deliver doughnuts to offices in the Tower in the morning. Now they tote chafing dishes of food to nearby offices for lunch on a daily basis.
NOT FOR EVERYONE
Carryout does not work for every restaurant that has tried it. Amerique, in River North, found that people did not believe a nouvelle place could also make sandwiches. But Monique`s Cafe, 213 W. Institute Pl., is doing nicely, in part, because her bistro food tends to hold up well in a boxed lunch, and also because she has a display case right next to the door.
Monique Hooker`s boxed creations go to many downtown offices every day, with things like creamy chicken salad, tenderloin sandwiches and Oriental chicken salad on pasta. They include desserts-cookies, tarts, fruit squares-and come with good-quality plastic ”silver,” bread and butter.
The ease and even the economy of carryout have made it successful in the city, but in the suburbs much the same system works at the Courtyard Gourmet, 1 N. River Lane, Geneva. Here, they have different specials every week, some just on weekends. These have included rotolo with spinach, ricotta and marinara sauce; and a veal dish with angel hair pasta and a zinfandel sauce.
Cold dishes such as fruit salad in yogurt and various pasta salads are sold to people who duck in for lunch at this pleasant plaza near the Geneva riverfront. Also, entrees are presented in a plastic tray with a dome, all of which can be thrown in an oven or microwave.
Lest we forget, the microwave plays a role in the popularity of carryout. Offices are equipped with them, and for short reheatings of baked pasta or sauteed meats, they are useful, even if it does require a step or two more than what it takes to wolf down a fast-food hamburger. Futhermore, carryout is winning converts for the microwave, where they might not otherwise be found.
”I always hated microwaves,” says Convito`s owner, Nancy Barocci. ”But for this kind of food, they really work.”
