Boy, Corona has been a wild, wild ride full of the highest highs and the lowest lows. Maybe you feel the same way: The littlest wins feel HUGE and amazing, and then the little annoying things you’d normally wave away totally overtake you. It’s rough running a restaurant these days! But through all that, we remain committed to being here for you, daily and without interruptions. Everybody has to eat! To our friends who have cheered us on with positive comments, sweet emails and beautiful artwork to cover our windows: THANK YOU!
Since we changed our operations on March 16, we’ve added a few services to serve you better and make up the loss in business caused by the pandemic. Necessity is the mother of invention! I want to share a bit of how our business has changed in the last month, one initiative at a time.
DELIVERY!
We’ve been offering weekend morning delivery to select zip codes for four weeks now! Sign up for our emails to learn more. On Friday, Saturday and Sundays, Milena & Darcy come early to bag up your orders and deliver them to your house by 9 am. For optimal routing, we serve different zip codes each day: Fridays are for Providence, Saturdays we go to East Bay, and Sundays for West Bay. When you get our weekly email announcing sign-ups, you can click through to ChowNow, choose delivery for the day that matches your zip code, and place your order. Please note that the delivery menu excludes sandwiches and bagels with cream cheese.
Because the actual delivery costs exceed the $5 delivery fee, we require a $40 minimum order to qualify for delivery. We know this may not fit the budget for every household. We suggest bundling orders with your neighbors to hit the minimum; we are also happy to welcome you seven days a week for a curbside pickup for orders in any amount!
Also: If your zip code is not on any of our routes, feel free to still reply and let us know you’re interested! We keep track of high-demand zips in case we can increase availability.
GROCERY BAGS!
When this all started, my fellow restaurant friend Chris and I were discussing the need for groceries. “We’ll never do it,” I said. Grocery stores run on 2-4% net margins, and they know how to sell groceries better than anyone! Of course, new information means we reflect and adjust. Grocery bags for pickup at our shop make sense as a way to reduce contact and avoid the stores. We just need to make sure we run tight on the numbers so we’re on the right side of those skinny margins. We’re good at that!
How it works: On Sunday night, we send an email with our Grocery Bag ingredients for the week. Each bag is $40 and includes enough plant-based groceries & fresh produce for a 2-person household. You can also add eggs, dairy, meats, our own breads (we’re testing slowly!) and plant-based alternatives. We choose thoughtfully, as we would for our own home: things that go well together, a few wildcards, and prioritizing the best-value buys at the moment. We also research a few recipe ideas and send them to all confirmed grocery friends!
Feedback on this has been GREAT so far. We’ve heard from you that the challenge of cooking with “mystery” ingredients is fun, the recipe ideas are great thought-starters, and you’re happy with the quality & quantity of food provided. Darcy and I have been taking a bag to share at home so we can understand and improve the customer experience for you.
This program is and will remain limited in scope. We have hardly any fridge space to support this, we’re not grocers anyway (maybe we should be?!) and we’ve received 2-3x demand for the supply on hand… so without a doubt, some of you will be empty-handed and disappointed. Please know that we do our best to respond swiftly to your email whether we have a bag for you or not.
Also: With every bag purchased, you are subsidizing neighbors in need! This past week, we set aside 30 bags for the Mt. Hope Neighborhood Association and Camp St. Ministries to distribute to vulnerable households. These are community members who are part of high-risk populations or need help providing for themselves and their families. ICYMI: Many food pantries and community kitchens have closed or reduced services during these times due to multiple factors, among them lack of volunteers and disruptions to the food supply chain. So they need our help now more than ever. Consider a donation!
FAMILY MEALS!
This is the newest idea baby which we started testing last week! Juan and I are spending our afternoons cooking family-style meals for customers to pick up on Tuesdays & Thursdays 4-6pm, same time as grocery bag pickups. I never thought we’d do dinner at Rebelle, but HERE WE ARE! (I say that a lot these days…)
We’re picking themes: Taco Tuesdays and Thursday Night Pasta! These themes are versatile enough that we can riff on what we have in our fridge, but you also know what to expect. Each meal is $25, serves 2 people and includes cookies for dessert! We’re pushing ourselves to include plant-based options with every family meal—we’ve learned from you that the current constraints around access to food & restaurants are not friendly to plant-based friends (we see you!). I hope this helps bring some excitement to your plates!
Family Meals are currently on test mode, which means we are sharing it first via email with a small group of regulars who enjoy submitting themselves as guinea pigs for our work! Once we feel confident in this offering, we’ll roll out to everyone. Stay tuned for more!
We are super grateful to have your support these days. Yes, it’s been incredibly stressful, and we have been super open about the struggle. We’re open about everything we do, sometimes to a fault, and I wouldn’t have it any other way! This business is very personal, it’s mine, yours and ours, and I want to share our journey, detractors be damned. (I heard we’ve inspired some memes now, how exciting!) We have made the conscious choice to be here through this tough time, and to support and keep up every relationship we have formed with our customers, team members and suppliers. It’s not easy, it requires a lot of fortitude, and we are growing from the pain! We are as nimble as we have always been and getting even better. I used to dance when I was younger, and my teacher used to tell us to take whatever energy we had (anxiety, stress, happiness) and channel it into our performance, making sure to leave it all on the floor. That’s the spirit I am channeling these days, we come in daily to crush our performance and leave it all on the floor. We still got TONS to give you!
Before you go:
We’d love to know how you’re feeding yourself & your household these days—my eating habits have totally changed, and I’m sure yours have in some way or other! We love surveying our customers as a way to get direct and targeted feedback on the areas we want to improve. Your answers help us brainstorm ways to meet your needs, so more detail is better!
Also tell me: What else are you interested in right now? Could be a product offering or even a topic you’d like to see featured in a blog post. It’s been hectic lately, but we’re paying attention to you, as we always are. Thank you for listening back!