Karri Peifer, author of Axios Richmond

The COVID-19 pandemic wasn't all doom and gloom for restaurants. Through ingenuity, savvy and smart pivots, some managed to find success.

• "The restaurants that embraced [change], especially early on, tended to do better than those that didn't," Hudson Riehle, vice president of research for the National Restaurant Association, tells Axios.

The big picture: Victory in the COVID era hinged on restaurants' willingness to make strategic changes, Riehle says.

• Examples: Adding takeout and delivery, pairing down menus, limiting schedules, finding new revenue streams (like wine and supper clubs) and embracing new laws allowing for cocktails to-go and streetside dining. 

Case study: Before the pandemic, Richmond, Virginia restaurateur Patrick Stamper's two-year-old burger joint, Beauvine Burger Concept, was doing fine, but business wasn't remarkable. 

• That changed in March 2020 when he and business partner Kelsey Aiken set in motion changes that helped them "win COVID," as Stamper tells Axios.
• Immediately pivoting to takeout and delivery has put them in an even stronger business position than ever: Their sales are more than double what they were pre-COVID.

Flashback: In mid-March 2020, Beauvine transitioned from a full-service, dine-in restaurant to a major takeout and delivery operation.

• They added phone lines and turned the dining room into a food packaging assembly line. Servers and bartenders became phone operators and delivery drivers — as did the co-owners.
• They printed up flyers and stuffed them under neighbors' doors.
• They hung a massive "OPEN FOR DELIVERY" banner on the restaurant, posted constantly on social media, and created a guerrilla marketing campaign comparing their cheaper delivery cost to that of third-party platforms like Grubhub.

Beauvine Burger Concept in Richmond found success by leaning into takeout early on. 
The result: The first Friday that dining rooms were shuttered by Virginia mandate, Beauvine set a sales record.

• They broke it the next day, then the Friday after that, and so on for the first few months of the pandemic.

By the numbers: Beauvine and other restaurants that made similar changes are now benefiting from consumer behavior shifts that have stuck around post-pandemic.

• Before COVID, off-premise dining accounted for 61% of all restaurant traffic, per the National Restaurant Association. 
• During the pandemic, it was around 90%, and today it's 74% — good news for takeout-heavy joints.

The bottom line: Stamper credits their success to the skeleton staff that stayed on — and not having any pride about the former business model to hold them back.

• Karri Peifer, author of 
  

Author: 13NewsNow.com, Preston Steger, Christopher Collette, Brenna McIntosh
Published: 7:08 PM EST January 19, 2024

PORTSMOUTH, Va. — A Virginia ABC location in Portsmouth will be converted to counter service less than a month after a man brazenly stole liquor from the store.
The ABC store on London Boulevard is one of two locations being remodeled, the other being on Turnpike Road, officials confirmed to 13News Now.
Under the counter service model, ABC team members select items as requested by customers. There are other stores with self-service available in Portsmouth and other cities in Hampton Roads.

The London Boulevard closed on Jan. 12 and the modeling project is underway, which Virginia ABC officials said should be done within the next few weeks. 
13News Now spoke to several Portsmouth residents who say they aren’t  happy about the temporary closure, and they aren’t too thrilled with the idea of counter service either.
“I would like to be able to go in the store and touch my own bottle," said Shatiara Mitchell.
“The lines here at like three o’clock in the afternoon are usually pretty long to begin with. Then, if they’re going to have counter service, they’re going to probably be out the door," said Britton Grieser.
Grieser said he can understand why they’re making the change. He said he’s witnessed theft at the London Boulevard store firsthand.
“Usually, it’s couples that come in and somebody will go to the counter, you know, with a couple little airplane bottles or something," he said. "Then their partner will sneak in the back, grab a bottle, and stuff it in their pants...and walk out."
The Turnpike Road store's remodel is done and the store reopened on Jan. 12.


The remodeling comes after the arrest of 41-year-old Diante Jackson of Virginia Beach, who police say stuffed multiple bottles of alcohol down his pants and simply walked out without paying, all while bemused onlookers jeered.

Surveillance video from inside the store on London Boulevard shows the man picking out at least four bottles of top-shelf vodka on Dec. 30.
Additionally, Portsmouth police claimed Jackson had hit this same store before, and stolen more than $3,000 in alcohol.
According to Virginia ABC, the London Boulevard and Turnpike Road locations were among the top five stores across the Commonwealth for theft during the fiscal year 2023.