Convenience culture has raised the bar for every restaurant and cocktail bar out there.
Most of them just haven’t noticed yet.
When dinner can show up at your door in thirty minutes and you can grab it in a pair of sweatpants, going out stops being the default. It becomes a choice. Every time someone books a table, gets dressed, and walks through your door, they’re choosing YOU over the couch.
Which means the in-person experience has to be worth it. Every. Single. Time.
Not to add any pressure, but hey - that’s just the way it goes.
We’re living in a convenience culture.
DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, Deliveroo, or whatever delivery app they’ll come up with next. You can get whatever you want at the snap of your fingers, straight to your door. And while that sounds nice on the outside, I think that convenience is quietly taking away the nuance, the care, and the connection that make a meal feel special.
If you’re opening a restaurant, cocktail bar, or any hospitality space right now, every single detail needs to be impeccable.
Not just at the soft opening.
Not just on a Friday night.
ALWAYS.
The lighting. The menus. The way your team greets someone at the door, and the way they say goodbye. Because the places that will see their bookings increase for the next few years won’t be the most convenient ones.
They’ll be the ones that make people feel something.
And the ones getting it right are already proving it.
At Boia De in Miami, if you order a bottle of wine and it’s not what you thought it would be, you’re not stuck with it. You finish your glass, they take the bottle away, and they bring you a different one. Then they serve that first bottle by the glass to other guests for the rest of the night.
No awkwardness. No guilt. Just a team that genuinely cares whether you enjoy your night.
At Macchialina, you’re surrounded by warm lighting - even if you’re sitting at the bar - and you’re able to speak to the bartender about their wine and spirits program, how they select each bottle that comes through their doors.
I always notice when the full team has the same level of education that the program director or the executive chef does - and it always leaves me curious about what they’ll do next and when I can book a time to come back and find out.
But here’s the thing: not every elevated spot gets it right.
One of my favorite cocktail bars lost me for good in a single moment, and it had nothing to do with the food or the drinks.
So let’s talk about what actually separates the places you’ll remember forever from the ones you’ll forget by Tuesday. What I notice the second I walk into a room as someone who photographs these spaces for a living. Why QR code menus NEED to go. And if you own or operate a spot, exactly what I’d get right before you open your doors.
Because getting it right isn’t about one grand gesture. It’s about a hundred tiny ones.
And getting it wrong?
Sometimes that only takes one time.
