NORWAY/SINGAPORE. Norwegian fast-casual seafood restaurant chain Pink Fish reopened its outlet at Stavanger Airport in Norway yesterday after a seven-month shutdown period due to COVID-19. The Moodie Davitt Report spoke to the company’s CEO Ronny Gjøse about the effects of the pandemic on his airport business and asks if his ambitions for expansion have been dimmed by the huge challenges the airport F&B segment has faced.
The Moodie Davitt Report: What measures have you introduced to ensure the safety of passengers and get the Stavanger restaurant back open?
Ronny Gjøse: We already have in place contactless payment, and advance ordering though our app and website, but the new regulations are more focused on things like social distancing (minimum one metre), both in queues, and in the seating area. This has inevitably meant that our seating capacity has been reduced.
We do also have an online system, where our customers register their visit via a QR code (if they sit down in the restaurant, as opposed to using takeaway services). This is so that we/the health authorities have control of tracking the guests if there should be someone in our area that has COVID-19. This system is delivered by a third party, and personal data is deleted after 14 days.
Have airport landlords been supportive in easing the cost burden of your restaurants, by lowering fees for the inactive period?
Yes they have – we have had some reduced rent in this period, which has been necessary, and of course highly appreciated. Otherwise, the grim reality is we would probably have had to close down the airport restaurants permanently.
Will you have to rehire staff, or did they keep their jobs through the period Stavanger was closed?
We have been very lucky. All of our staff including our store manager were laid off when we were forced to close, but the Norwegian regulations and support regarding loss of income have helped them to handle the situation. It’s still of course very tough and challenging times for everyone. We don’t need to rehire staff, as some of them have returned with the reopening.
In this first phase of reopening we don’t yet need the previous staffing levels, as of course the sales will be much lower than normal with the much-reduced traffic at the airport. We will also have some reduced opening hours, although we will be open from the first flight in the morning, until the peak period in the early evening is over.
Can you give us an update on the circumstances of your other airport business at Singapore Changi?
The Singapore restaurant closed a bit later than Stavanger and March and April were of course awful and challenging. But we kept the business alive by delivering our food via our delivery partners such as Grab, Food Panda and so on.
“We do see that the airports need a broader F&B portfolio, and that guests can’t just eat sandwiches, burgers and other unhealthy stuff. We do believe that we will get our share of the airport passenger spending cake by offering a healthier alternative” – Pink Fish CEO Ronny Gjøse
From May we have also been open for dine-in, but with strict regulations, and we have seen positive rises in business for each month. As for September we actually are on the same sales as before COVID-19, and that’s amazing!
We have also managed to work on our concept in this period, including more local adaptations regarding menu and flavours. To this end, we have been working closely with some Singapore chefs, to really make sure that our dishes are correctly balanced to both meet the expectations of Singaporeans, and hopefully also soon some tourists.
Do you have any regrets about expanding the Pink Fish brand into airports, given what has happened with COVID?
No! We do think that even if it takes some time to see the same traffic at the airports, we think that our fast casual seafood concept really brings something new to the airport F&B scene.
To put it another way, we do see that the airports need a broader F&B portfolio, and that guests can’t just eat sandwiches, burgers and other unhealthy stuff. We do believe that we will get our share of the airport passenger spending cake by offering a healthier alternative.
Are you still ambitious about what you can achieve in airports?
Yes, I think the potential remains to open more Pink Fish restaurants at many mid-sized to large airports all over the world. As mentioned, we think that we can enrich the F&B portfolio in airports. We deliver on convenience and speed, the food is great, it’s healthy – and it’s all thanks to the great recipes created by our co-founder and winner of Bocuse d’Or [world chef championship], Geir Skeie.
So the taste is of course the main focus, but besides all of that our packaging is compostable, and it’s also very sustainable to eat proteins from the sea. I think that we really deliver on the correct drivers/mega-trends for consumers.
Any specific plans in place to open more Pink Fish airport restaurants, once COVID is behind us?
We would love to do so, but to achieve that we need to team up with some big operators at different airports around the world, to subcontract the concept, as we don’t have the capacity ourselves to cover the whole world.
In the meantime, our focus regarding owned and self-operated restaurants is to grow the business in Asia and develop the business of the restaurants we have in Norway.
