Weekly Wrap April 14: Communal Dining Tables, Delivery Robots, and More
The most important hospitality industry news right now
Dave Foss
April 14, 2025
In this Weekly Wrap, we’re covering the challenge of communal dining tables, kitchens that are too hot, Applebee’s customer insights program, and more.
The Headline: “Overall inflation cools in March, but menu prices remain stubbornly high”
The Source: Nation’s Restaurant News
What You Need to Know:
The inflation level in March cooled more than expected, registering an annual rate of 2.4% — a six-month low. Prices fell 0.1% in March, after rising 0.2% in February, according to federal data released Thursday morning.
It’s the first time prices have fallen month-over-month since May 2020, driven by lower energy prices.
Food prices, however, were a different story. Food away from home rose 0.4% in March, matching February’s increase and outpacing every month since at least September. Year-over-year, menu prices are up 3.8%.
Full-service prices drove much of this increase, rising 0.6% over the month, while limited-service meals rose by just 0.2%. Year-over-year, full-service meals are up by 4.1%, while limited-service meals are up by 3.4%.
Our Take:
Week in and week out, there’s one through line that affects everything tied to prices and inflation: uncertainty. Anything can happen on any given day that sends the cost of any number of items skyrocketing. That’s not changing anytime soon.
Now is the time to prepare. Tighten the ship. Get your recipes locked in and streamlined. Trim or tweak your menus for maximum efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Don’t wait until something unpredictable sends the price of an ingredient — one that’s been stable for two decades — soaring. Be ready. Be vigilant. It’s tough out there, but it can be managed if you’re prepared.
Communal Dining Tables
The Headline: “The Communal Dining Table Gamble”
The Source: Eater
What You Need to Know:
At a recent dinner, I faced the worst fate that can befall a diner: There was an annoying guy at the restaurant. He spoke too loudly about boring things, shared unsolicited “expertise” on subjects it was clear he knew little about, and wore an ugly jacket. He never said anything offensive or inappropriate, but ugh, he just sucked.
It would be one thing if I could whisper and gossip with the group I was dining with that night about the odious man across the room. But no, the worst part is that I was seated next to him. The restaurant featured a communal table, meant to foster connection and a tablewide desire to get out of your shell. But I was shoulder to shoulder with a guy whose laugh shot chills up my spine, whose every sentence elicited eyerolls, asking him to pass the shrimp.
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This hasn’t stopped a new crop of fine dining establishments from attempting to bring people even more together by serving their food in the most “together” way possible. Over the past few years, the everyone-gather-round party vibe has expanded from cafeteria-style restaurants and Le Pain Quotidien. Perhaps it started with the community table at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Dinner Party in Brooklyn and Beast in Portland were early adopters, as was Mosquito Supper Club in New Orleans. But as the “loneliness epidemic” continues to affect people, more restaurants are using this to create new social opportunities. There are communal tables at Maty’s in Miami and Kann in Portland. And Kwame Onwuachi’s Dōgon in D.C. just added communal standing dining.
Our Take:
From a consumer perspective, I’ve had some great meals at communal tables — but, much like the writer of this article, I’ve also had some miserable experiences sitting next to insufferable people.
As an operator, though, communal dining opens up interesting possibilities. The concept is appealing and can make service far more streamlined — a massive plus as we continue to feel the squeeze of labor shortages and inflation. It also allows for more efficient use of space. One big table you can seat anyone or any group at? That’s not just flexible, that’s smart.
That said, communal dining comes with caveats. Some places go all-in on it, offering little to no alternative. In my opinion, communal tables work best when they’re part of a mix — when there are also ample standalone tables. As a guest, I have to be in the right mood to talk and engage with strangers. Sometimes I want to be social, but more often than not, I just want to eat my meal with my friends or my partner. And that’s it.
The takeaway here is that communal tables can be fantastic when they’re used thoughtfully and with options. They benefit both the guest and the operator, so long as everyone knows what they’re getting into. I’ve made reservations thinking I was getting my own table, only to be sat at a communal one and it just wasn’t the night for socializing.
DoorDash-Coco Delivery Bots
The Headline: “DoorDash rolls out food delivery robots in Los Angeles”
The Source: Los Angeles Times
What You Need to Know:
A robot on wheels could serve up your next meal thanks to a partnership between DoorDash and Coco Robotics that’s bringing food delivery robots to Los Angeles sidewalks.
The food delivery service DoorDash announced Thursday that eligible customers in Los Angeles and Chicago can order food through their app to be delivered by a small, box-shaped robot with zero emissions.
Coco Robotics and similar companies such as Serve Robotics and Starship Technologies have been operating food delivery robots in Los Angeles and other cities for several years. DoorDash’s international arm Wolt began a partnership with Coco in Helsinki, Finland this year.
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Despite the challenges of navigating busy city sidewalks and crosswalks already shared by pedestrians, Coco robots have completed more than 400,000 deliveries and partnered with hundreds of restaurants. Using delivery robots instead of human drivers can save restaurants up to 50% in profits, according to Coco’s website.
Frustrated or skeptical passersby have kicked the bots or intentionally obstructed their path, while the cities of New York and San Francisco have banned them, on and off, because of congestion concerns. Some opponents say the bots take jobs from human workers and contribute to chaotic urban traffic.
DoorDash Labs, the company’s robotics and automation arm involved in the Coco partnership, announced a collaboration last year with a drone delivery service called Wing. Wing drones began delivering food in Christiansburg, Va., in March 2024 after launching a pilot program in Australia in 2022.
“Not every delivery needs a two-ton car just to deliver two chicken sandwiches,” Harrison Shih, senior director of DoorDash Labs, said in a statement. “We believe the future of delivery will be multi-modal, and we’re thrilled to partner with Coco to expand sidewalk robot deliveries that complement the Dasher network.”
Our Take:
Love it or hate it, as technology pushes forward, robot and drone delivery systems are only going to keep evolving, and more and more apps are going to jump on board. Waymo's already handling driverless rideshares, Amazon’s dropping off packages by drone, and now it makes perfect sense that food delivery apps are getting into the game.
Yes, there are cities that will keep pushing back on the idea of driverless food delivery (NYC, San Francisco). But others are more willing to test the waters. L.A. and Chicago are major markets, and if things go smoothly there, you can bet delivery bots will start popping up in other big cities soon enough.
Hot In the Kitchen
The Headline: “This kitchen problem could worsen turnover, energy bills”
The Source: Nation’s Restaurant News
What You Need to Know:
Given today’s high construction costs and scarcity of available real estate, restaurant companies are more likely to move into nontraditional spaces — a trend that, believe it or not, can translate into hotter kitchens.
It is a potential problem because uncomfortable kitchens can cause higher turnover among line cooks, not to mention bigger energy bills.
Those nontraditional spaces — such as a former retail box at a strip shopping center or a second-gen space on the ground floor of a multistory building — can create HVAC design challenges in the kitchens. This is especially true if multiple exhaust hoods are called for in the design.
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When working on new restaurants (as opposed to older, nontraditional spaces like vacant retail boxes or ground-floor square footage at mixed-use properties), architecture and engineering (AE) teams can easily allocate square footage and other infrastructure for Dedicated Outdoor Air Systems (DOAS). This equipment allows restaurants to maintain positive pressure and also condition outside air as it is being pulled into the building.
HVAC equipment upgrades are also possible at many existing restaurant buildings. Having zeroed in on kitchen comfort, for example, two national chicken chains have tasked their AE teams with finding opportunities to replace rooftop units with DOAS systems, allowing them to condition outside air and make kitchen employees more comfortable. Another fast-expanding ghost kitchen, having prioritized the comfort of its line cooks, is systematically reviewing its portfolio to better understand how its kitchens are functioning. The goal is to create criteria for avoiding discomfort and other issues in the future.
In the case of nontraditional spaces where HVAC design is more challenging, it might be necessary to find workarounds to more traditional HVAC systems. One fine-dining concept in Houston needed to ventilate five exhaust hoods in a single ground-floor kitchen. Fortunately, the multistory building had rooftop chases that made this possible, though it was a tight squeeze. The design utilized multiple louvers on the first floor to bring in make-up air.
Our Take:
For those who haven’t had the pleasure of working in a poorly ventilated, under-HVAC’ed kitchen, let me paint you a picture: sweat pouring down your face and body, t-shirt under your chefs jacket soaked, chugging a gallon of water just to stay hydrated, all while trying not to pass out from the relentless heat coming off a six-burner griddle and a 500-degree oven that's been running since 10 a.m. It is wonderful, an absolute delight. Truly.
This article does a great job highlighting the very real challenges — and rising costs — of keeping kitchens and dining spaces cool. The HVAC and ventilation systems required to maintain a safe working environment aren’t cheap, and neither are the electric bills that come with running them nonstop during service. Staying cool and cost-efficient is becoming tougher and tougher to balance.
Now, if you're a big box operator, this is merely a speed bump. Sure, you'd like to keep expenses down, but if you fall in love with a location that doesn’t have enough HVAC tonnage or proper airflow, you’ve got the capital to retrofit it to your needs.
But for smaller, independent operators, budgets are tighter and margins are slimmer. And this is where space selection becomes critical. I’ve watched plenty of folks fall in love with a space — the location is awesome, the bones are beautiful, or both — only to sign the lease, fire up the kitchen, and realize that the kitchen becomes a sauna during service. Why? Because no one thought to check if the HVAC system could actually support the output.
What happens next? They end up sinking tens of thousands of dollars into retrofits they didn’t plan for and can’t really afford. I can hear some of you saying, “that doesn’t really happen.” But it happens all the time.
Moral of the story: before you sign anything, do your homework. And if you’re even a little unsure, spend a couple hundred bucks to get a qualified HVAC and ventilation expert in there before you pull the trigger. It might just keep your staff cool and your costs down.
Applebee’s and Customer Feedback
The Headline: “How Applebee’s designed its customer insights program”
The Source: Restaurant Dive
What You Need to Know:
Customer experience initiatives need regular nurturing, and their growth depends on conversations with all the relevant stakeholders.
This has been the most important lesson Jill Marchick, VP of consumer insights and business analytics at Applebee’s, has discovered over the course of her career, she said during a presentation last month at the Qualtrics X4 conference in Salt Lake City.
“You can’t just launch a program and say, ‘I’m done. OK, onto the next thing,’” Marchick said. “You have to refresh this. You need to keep people engaged throughout the whole organization. It’s a big investment, and you’ve got to make sure people are using it.”
The combination of conversations with stakeholders and constant refinement sits at the heart of Applebee’s customer listening strategy. The strategy uses feedback from franchisees and managers, and the company constantly refines its efforts based on feedback from customers and associates.
“We all get reams of data, but how do you take that data and make it actionable for the bottom-line team members, those servers that are working in our restaurants, all the way up to the franchise organizations and corporate as well?” Marchick said.
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Dashboards depend on the user
Disseminating the data is every bit as important as collecting it. Managers and associates play an important role in Applebee’s dashboard development process — they’re the ones using the information to shape restaurant-level operations.
The dashboards contain information from the questionnaires, as well as Google reviews, customer service calls and other sources, according to Marchick. Applebee’s plans on adding DoorDash in the future as part of its constant refinement strategy.
Our Take:
Not every operator has access to mountains of data, or the manpower to analyze it. It takes time and a boatload of capital to gather all that information and make sense of it. But if you break it down, there are takeaways any small restaurant can use without killing the budget.
Stakeholders: In a small restaurant, this means your staff and management. These are your people on the frontlines. They see what’s happening in real time. They witness guest reactions firsthand. Owners need to be tapping into their insights regularly.
Google/Yelp Reviews: Yelp is the bane of many a restaurant’s existence. Someone shows up 30 minutes late for their reservation, but you had to give their table away, and suddenly you’re hit with a one-star review because they had to sit at the bar and “the food wasn’t that good.” Yeah…I know.
That said, I’m not looking at every individual gripe, I’m looking for patterns. If five reviews mention that the pasta is too salty, maybe it’s time to check on that recipe. The feedback isn’t always elegant, but it can still be useful.
Surveys: These can be incredibly valuable, especially if you're using Resy or OpenTable. You can build a follow-up survey right into the guest’s reservation flow. I’ve gotten a lot of meaningful, actionable feedback this way. A limited-time gift card offer in exchange for survey participation isn’t always doable for smaller spots, but depending on your size and margins, it might be worth exploring to boost engagement.
The full Applebee’s playbook on customer feedback might be out of reach for many independent operators, but that doesn’t mean you can’t borrow a few pages. The system is clearly working, and with a little creativity, elements of it can be adapted to fit restaurants of any size.