How was FoodCo’s first in-person event.

FoodCo.Experience provided an afternoon full of ideas for around 70 entrepreneurs and restaurateurs on Thursday (9). The event, which was sponsored by Gold FoodService, Champers Embalagens and Agência Reset; in addition to the support of Nomaa Hotel and EGG Educa, it was the first face-to-face event since the creation of FoodCo., in July 2021.

Made in the kitchen Good Gourmet, in Curitiba, the FoodCo.Experience had talks by Nathália Royo, from Galunion’s market intelligence and marketing sector, Ivan Achcar, director of the Gastronomy Business Management School (EGG) and Marcelo Fernandes, one of the main and most awarded restaurateurs do Brasil, responsible for Alex Atala’s DOM and the Kinoshita restaurant. Interspersed with the lectures, guest pitches were shown on topics such as the metaverse and building brand equity.

“The level of guests and discussions was very high. The data made available by the speakers are essential for working in the sector. The reality is that many restaurateurs end up working with empiricism”, noted chef and entrepreneur Délio Canabrava, owner of Cantina do Délio and Banoffi Confeitaria.

Consumption trends were addressed at FoodCo.Experience

A large part of the data was presented in the first lecture, by Nathália Royo, and set the tone for the discussions provoked by the following speakers during the FoodCo.Experience. Based on Galunion’s most recent consumer behavior survey, Nathália presented a summary of the 27 trends and stressed the importance of applying multiple trends.

“The last edition of the NRA fair showed that the combination of trends that have to do with the brand is something very present. Nostalgia, fun as a side dish and comfort food are trends that can be present in the same product or business”, he exemplified, citing the menus based on series and films at Chelsea Burger Curitiba.

Self-service and the use of technology as part of the salon, which were big bets before the pandemic, turned out to be a gray area. While the new generations prefer full autonomy to order and pay, the older ones prefer to keep the order mediated by a human and make the payment digital only. “But they all want to be served by a person and prefer to ask questions with another human being instead of a machine”, pointed out Nathália.

Technology and human labor

Technology as a facilitator of the restaurant’s day-to-day life was one of the highlights of Ivan Achcar’s speech, from EGG Educa, during his panel at FoodCo.Experience. He was referring to both using a database manager to analyze business performance and customer preferences and kitchen machinery.

“Nowadays, nobody wants and nobody deserves to work peeling potatoes or washing dishes. Buy a dishwasher to save a person’s salary in that job and better pay your employees, they are as important as your customers”, he stressed.

Achcar has a unique curriculum. He was a cook at important restaurants in the Brazilian gastronomic scene, wrote an award-winning book, starred in culinary programs on closed television and currently owns a business school for gastronomy, the first and only in Brazil.

Due to the multiplicity of fronts on which he has acted and the experiences he has had, he is categorical in many of his statements. One of them is that the COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) is not the most important calculation of a restaurant, but the primary cost, which considers the COGS added to the CMO (Cost of Labor). “It’s no use having data and numbers if you don’t know how to interpret them and transform them into information”, he pointed out.

Management and strategies

The post-lecture questions were so rich that Marcelo Fernandes decided to change the course of his presentation. O restaurateur would close the afternoon of debates at FoodCo.Experience talking about the importance of qualified management for the restaurant’s growth, but invited Nathália and Ivan to the stage again.

In the exchange with the public, the speakers answered questions about the financial health of the businesses, hospitality, expansion and launching of new businesses and delivery as an initial strategy for opening new homes.

“The best thermometer to know if a region is in need of a product is to launch a delivery. If the output is good, you know you can serve the region with a face-to-face house”, taught Fernandes, citing the process he has used for the hamburger restaurant Tradi, currently with ten operations in São Paulo.

Fernandes highlighted the resilience of entrepreneurs in the sector who, even after a pandemic, remain active, reinventing themselves and starting to listen to more employees and customers – “the main Cs of a restaurant”, as he defined it – for the continuous improvement of the business. “When you have control of processes and management of your brand, you start to sleep peacefully”, he concluded.

About FoodCo.

The FoodCo. is a community foodtech and education for owners of gastronomic operations and provides technical management and business content for associates. A curation of news and case studies is sent daily, in addition to weekly macroeconomic data analysis, fortnightly mentoring and monthly events, such as the Arena Food Co., virtual proposal. The community is made up of more than 14,000 subscribers, who have access to WhatsApp groups for exchanging information and networking with their peers.