Does the All-Day Dining Business Model Still Work for Chefs and Owners?
By Jacqueline Raposo for Plate Magazine.
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Image: The interior of All Day Baby in Los Angeles. Photo Joyce Kim.
Plate’s Nov/Dec 2017 All Day Dining issue tracked good eats across all hours. Back then, the idea was a novel one: There was plenty of dinner for breakfast and breakfast for dinner. Small plates made the rounds in big hotel dining rooms, daytime-friendly non-alcoholic drinks and pairing options were starting to tick up, and high-end pastries were served in high numbers from coast to coast.
But as the pandemic has disrupted—well, everything—we got to wondering if the all-day model was more relevant than ever, or relevant at all.
Location is King
What was true before the pandemic and is even truer now: To succeed, an all-day dining spot needs daytime local foot traffic and evening destination diners.
Jeremy Salamon’s Agi’s Counter in Brooklyn and Matt Kirk’s Automat in San Francisco both opened in November of 2021 and have thus far secured that balance: They supply casual daytime fare for their neighbors between 8 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., and then at 5:30 p.m. offer a slightly more upscale dinner menu that lures folks from other neighborhoods.
Los Angeles’ All Day Baby soft-opened in November 2019 only to close in March 2020 with just 10 dinner services under their belt. For over a year, Operating Manager Lien Ta and Chef Jonathan Whitener rolled with furloughs, unexpected to-go menus, and gradual re-openings like everyone else. Customers returned for their in-house day menu and happy hour bar menu, served from 9 a.m. onward. But when they re-debuted their dinner menu of shareable small plates last summer, locals weren’t lining up. “People weren’t ready to eat that way—or eat that way with us,” says Ta. “We’ve served breakfast and lunch only for so long that it's what people are used to.” They’ve since simplified the dinner menu, reverting to comfort food entrées more congruous with their daytime fare. But their identity as an all-day café remains worse for the wear. And building volume for dinner shifts continues to be slow-going.
Flexibility is key
In the early days of the pandemic, even fine-dining establishments started to offer takeout menus, family meals, and to-go cocktail kits. Salamon finds that the all-day model continually supports such means of boosting the bottom line. His pre-pandemic plan always included delivery and to-go orders. But with customers now accustomed to purchasing meal kits, Agi’s offers to-go picnic boxes and has cake and Champagne soirées on their summer lineup. “If I were exclusively a dinner restaurant, I wouldn't be able to do that,” Salamon says. “There’s more flexibility in terms of the opportunity to be creative and engage with the community.”
