Bac Nguyen | Chef Owner, Ninja City Kitchen and Bar
Thursday, May 21, 2020 marked the official first day of being able to resume dine-in restaurant services in Ohio – dubbed by Governor Mike DeWine as #responsiblerestartohio. But, not all are taking advantage of the opportunity, citing a myriad of reasons with safety of staff and patrons being the overwhelming concern. For other establishments such as Ninja City Kitchen and Bar located in the Gordon Square district of Cleveland, business sans dine-in patrons has had exactly the opposite expected effect.
About two hours before the start of service, Chef/Owner Bac Nguyen and his business partner Dylan Fallon were quite busy prioritizing incoming take out tickets as well as assembling a mock-up for the potential upcoming meal kit delivery program.
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Bac arranges to go containers for a meal kit.
Bac talks about portioning, and presentation possibilities for upcoming meal kits.
Pho for 4 is one planned meal kit the Ninja City team is preparing to roll out.
They had this to say about operations during the #COVID19 shutdown:
“We’re actually probably doing more volume now than we were last year at this time. Coming out of the post winter thing, sic where we were kind of in a bit of a lull.”
– Bac.
“Regardless of how busy we are, as compared to any other year just looking out into the landscape right now, we’re just super fortunate. To add dine-in orders in the midst of how much take-out delivery we’re doing and having to deal with all those [COVID] restrictions, rules and regulations – the distancing … we’re used to packing people in like sardines to get the numbers right.
We can’t do that.”
– Dylan.
“As more and more places open, the pie will get divided, and our numbers will probably go down.”
– Bac.
“There’s no reason to expose ourselves to any more risk.”
– Dylan
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