Video restaurants
TeamLab (founded in 2001) is an international art collective, an interdisciplinary group of various specialists such as artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians and architects whose collaborative practice seeks to navigate the confluence of art, science, technology, and the natural world. Besides permanent exhibitions in the most prestigious Art Museum and Galleries in the world from Helsinki to San Francisco, TeamLab has a permanent exhibition through the MoonFlower Restaurant in Gynza where the whole dining area is a changing video. The restaurant’s interior space offers a perfect fusion of food and art. Guests can enjoy delicious dishes made with seasonal ingredients, while appreciating an interactive digital art installation featuring trees and flowers that unfold themselves across the dinnerware, as they change from season to season.
In Europe, Chef Paco Roncero has been doing something even more extreme combining the video feature with food art, unexpected dishware, and waiters playing the part.
Opened in 2014 on the Spanish island of Ibiza, Sublimotion is so much more than just the world’s most expensive restaurant. It’s dining at its most surreal, futuristic, and thought-provoking. With its own musical menu, choreographed service to match, and groundbreaking technology to awaken your senses one bite at a time, a meal there is anything but ordinary.
The SupperClub is back
In 2013, after 11 years in business, one of the first Restaurant & Clubs in the world - Bed SupperClub in Bangkok closed permanently its doors.
Almost 10 years later, several concepts - perhaps less loungy yet theatrical and culinary-forward - have proven that Entertaining Dining is here to stay. Lío, the concept of restaurant and cabaret of the Pacha brand is expanding to Mykonos, Dubai, and London taking over the former Café de Paris. After the success of Lío’s London pop-up in 2019, the most immersive experience of cherries will have a permanent space in the capital, joining the flagship ‘Lío Ibiza’, inaugurated a decade ago.
Lío’s show, curated by Pacha’s creative director, Joan Gràcia, offers its visitors a unique and surprising exhibition where dinner, cabaret and club come together in a unique way. But they will have a very tough competition with other concepts like Box Cabaret Club in Soho or Proud Cabaret with already 3 locations in London.
The epitome of the success is the recent acquisition of Hakkasan Group by Tao Group to create a combined company that operates 61 entertainment dining and nightlife venues in 22 markets across five continents. The new combined company brings together Tao Group Hospitality’s Tao at the Venetian, Lavo at the Palazzo, and Beauty & Essex and Marquee at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas with Hakkasan Group’s Hakkasan and Wet Republic at the MGM Grand, Omnia at Caesars Palace, Jewel at Aria, and Casa Calavera at Virgin Hotels.
Design for flexibility
Designing for maximum flexibility was important before the pandemic, but the nimbleness that operators had to exhibit in 2020 was unlike anything the industry had ever seen. Designing for a future that allows for maximum flexibility is sure to be a key concern across all market segments.
The pandemic has taught the industry how to adapt from a dine-in only operations to a delivery-only scenario overnight. Now it’s time to be able to think this through and design spaces accordingly. Restaurant operators across all segments need to think through how their operations can handle a surge in off-premises orders. Additionally, they should think through how the expediting process works with dine-in vs. takeout and how the POS handles the mix. One of the keys to success [going forward] is a good off-premises program that doesn’t sacrifice dine-in business. To do that, restaurateurs have to look at their labor differently. They’ve got to look at their facilities differently and they’ve got to start learning from QSRs.
Ventless technology is also something operators should consider moving forward as that’s one way to help with current labor issues, which can be in addition to what they already have. Either when it comes to BOH or FOH the restaurant landscape will look very different post-pandemic and restaurant operators have no choice than to be flexible and pivot.
Moving forward, operational changes will center on productivity, efficiency and having multifaceted facilities. That means having dining room spaces that convert between outdoor and indoor spaces. And a blurring of the segments. It’s about being able to be more efficient and how you view your products and staffing, too. People now have to be cross-trained and we have to go back to the days of the full certification of employees across all areas of the restaurant.
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