Take home meals are here to stay even as restaurants find their feet

With their backs to the wall, restaurateurs came up with many novel ways to keep their employees working.

The most popular was to offer take home meals and meal kits to customers looking for restaurant quality meals, without the in-dining experience.

Take home meals have been highly popular and kept many hospitality workers employed in Sydney.

However, among the restaurant community, this has become a contentious and sometimes divisive.

When a chef cooks, they want you to enjoy the meal on a plate, styled in such a way that adds to the dining experience – not plonked in a plastic container looking like a cheap food court take away meal.

Maurice Terzini, owner of Bondi-based restaurants Icebergs and Cicciabella believes the take-home meal option has become the best alternative to keep many restaurants in business, "as long as the message doesn't distract from core business.

“A meal in a restaurant has far more impact," he says. "The social role restaurants play is very important. It doesn't taste like this at home." 

Other chefs and food producers took to collaborations to keep their employees in a job.

The owner of Vic's Meats and Victor Churchill, Anthony Puharich, worked with hatted chefs across Sydney, including two-hat restaurant LuMi, to create Vic's Meat Pie of the Week. These pies are flying off the shelves.

Owner-chef of Good Food Guide-award winning restaurant Saint Peter, Josh Niland, ran a series of collaborations with leading Sydney chefs Sean Moran and Mitch Orr. 

Mr Niland says his take home meals will continue to be offered after restrictions ease and he expressed the importance of having a number of business models that go beyond dining in a restaurant.

"Our take-home meal kits proved to be a really essential part of our business over the past months. It has now been integrated into Fish Butchery, where we will continue to offer these kits as Fish Butchery at Home,” Niland said.

Keita Abe from Chaco Ramen has turned his ramen into a dedicated restaurant. He made take-home meal kits available with a delivery service that delivered throughout Sydney.  He said it was his take home meal kits service that saved his business. They became so popular that these noodle meals are now stocked at Haymarket IGA.  

Owner of Newtown cafe-restaurant Rising Sun Workshop, Nick Smith, has also adopted take-home meals as part of his business. "We're pretty committed to it and actually going further, I would like to offer other restaurants an opportunity for us to develop home meals on their behalf, and look to produce and distribute those. I think it's a really exciting new space."