Now that eating in is the new dining out, restaurants have had to dramatically change their operation as a matter of survival in the most challenging times for any business.
Most places have had to close their doors completely as the coronavirus takes a grip on the nation and although the government rules are changing by the day, a few Bristol restaurants are still thankfully able to offer a delivery service.
Until last week, Bertha’s pizza restaurant in the Harbourside had never offered deliveries but owner Graham Faragher says he had no other option if he was to keep his business open at what is a critical time for the hospitality sector.
“It has been incredibly stressful reacting and adapting to each announcement and trying to juggle what’s best for the team and wider public,” says Graham, who worked as a McLaren F1 engineer before turning his hand to pizzas.
“At times we’ve felt in limbo having to make a public health decision without the relevant expertise.”
Graham says he’s grateful the Bertha’s model is suited to takeaway and he has had the option to adapt his business, although admits that he was initially reluctant about sending pizzas to customers via a delivery rider.
“The biggest worry about changing to a delivery-only model was my own stubbornness and ‘pizza snobbery’ because I want our product to arrive in perfect condition.”
Bertha’s pizzas are now being sold via Deliveroo for the first time and although it’s not a money spinner for Graham once he has paid the delivery cost, staff and usual overheads, it has enabled him to carry on trading for the time being.
“Our team has been incredible and the pizzas are ready within two minutes of receiving the Deliveroo order.
“This is all new to us, and we’re still on a steep learning curve, so feedback has been important and, overall, the reaction has been very positive.
“We’ve had a few pizzas arrive vertically, which I’ll be taking measures to resolve, but generally our customers already know our product and appreciate we’re trying incredibly hard to get it to them at ‘restaurant quality’.”
Until this week, I had never used any delivery services but if there was a time to lose my Deliveroo virginity, it was during a lockdown when I couldn’t eat in restaurants or get to the shops.
I ordered three pizzas from Bertha’s the other night and tracked the order's progress on the Deliveroo app, from the ‘preparing’ stage to ‘delivering’.
The original delivery time predicted 30 minutes, which gave me enough time to prepare a quick salad to accompany the pizzas and crack open a bottle of wine.
Meanwhile, my daughter kept watch from the front window to see if the Deliveroo rider was approaching.
After just 22 minutes, we could see a chap on a ‘recumbent’ bicycle - that’s those low, horizontal push bikes with seats - pedalling at speed along our street as if he was training for the Olympics.
We live in BS6 and it’s all uphill from Bertha’s in Wapping Wharf so this guy must have been Olympian-fit to get the pizzas to us in that time.
Removing his helmet and keeping a safe distance, he placed the three boxes on the path for us to pick up once he had left our garden.
'Crisp, light and not at all soggy'
The pizzas were still warm and, most impressively, the horizontal storage between the restaurant and our house meant the toppings on our Napoletana, Aubergenie and SausageFest pizzas were still perfectly intact, with neither an olive, caper or piece of sausage out of place. The sourdough bases were still crisp, light and not at all soggy, as boxed delivery pizzas can often be.
The cost for the three pizzas was £39.20, plus the £2.99 delivery fee and 49p ‘service fee’, which took the total to £42.78.
OK, that’s not as cheap as some high street pizza chains - or the supermarket pizzas stockpiled in your freezer - but the quality was infinitely better and the fact that the money was going some way in helping a local restaurant survive this terrible crisis certainly made them taste even better.
