How COVID Changed the Restaurant Business For Good

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At first, Marissa Allen baked cookies to make friends. When her husband, who played professional football, was traded by the Kansas City Chiefs to the Houston Texans

“It was kind of my intro,” Marissa says with a smile and shrug. “‘I made these cookies for you,’ and I made friends.”She made many friends, and her cookies are amazing: thick but light, crumbly but not dry. The flavors, like Pop-Tarts and lemon, are spot on. In fact, you may never eat another Pop-Tart after having one of her cookies. These are best-friends-for-life cookies.

“We thought this would legitimize our shipping business,” Marissa says. “We shipped cookies — we were really good at it. Then we had our own kitchen.” A store was the next step. Some restaurateurs tried ghost restaurants, offering takeout and to-go meals, paying for a commercial kitchen but passing on the expensive fixtures that go along with a dining room. Among them was Greg Tierney, who wanted to bring more Detroit-style pizza to the North Texas market. He started Motor City Pizza in a ghost kitchen in October 2020, focusing on delivery, and now he's opening a full-service restaurant.

Beyond trying to keep up with shipping orders, they were running boxes of cookies to cars outside in the parking lot; they took to-go orders online since customers couldn’t come inside the store. “And then Oprah came,” Marissa says as she smacks her hands together, thrusting one skyward to illustrate how business took off. The media empress put Cookie Society on her list of favorite things in 2020. “I felt like I was being chased, like I was Pac-Man.”

At the mention of the iconic sound Pac-Man makes when he dies, Marissa laughs and says, “I’ve had a couple of those moments, but I have a couple of lives left.”Alison McLean From her job as chief public affairs officer for the Texas Restaurant Association, Kelsey Erickson Streufert saw an unprecedented wave of innovation within the food and beverage industry triggered by the pandemic. That innovation has stuck for many, “creating lasting opportunity for restaurants,” Streufert said.

 

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JeffAllen71 ILL!!!

CookieSociety y'all cookies are delicious 😋

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