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Eric Rivera of Addo restaurant in Seattle takes experiential dining to a new level in the face of coronavirus

The chef’s drive to be different has paid off in the pandemic era

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

May 12, 2020

3 Min Read
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In the past two months, restaurants across the country have devised many ways to stay afloat in the face of social distancing and closed dining rooms, both part of the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Family-sized meals and meal kits have proven to be popular options for people looking for interesting and affordable ways to feed those with whom they’re sheltering in place. So has the sale of pantry staples and other goods that have been in short supply in supermarkets.

Eric Rivera is doing all of that at Addo, his Seattle venue that evolved from two-seat dinners in his apartment to pop-ups to, over the past couple of years, an experience-focused venue that requires customers to book and pay in advance.

Customers would spend around $85-$125 per person for sight-unseen “experiences” that could be casual Puerto Rican meals or 20-course tastings.

That’s no longer the case. Now customers usually pay considerably less and they know what they’re getting, whether that’s a packet of yeast or house-cured salmon fillets ready to cook at home. But Rivera has still managed to find ways to offer unique experiences.

Like many other fine-dining restaurants, Rivera shifted Addo’s offerings to casual comfort food, but once he saw that everyone else was doing that, he tried to figure out what he could do that was different.

“That’s a constant drive for me,” he said.

So he asked his guests via social media and his weekly newsletter what they wanted.

“It’s having conversations with them and asking, ‘what else do you need? What else do you want? What else are you missing?’” he said.

The result has been around 40 new offerings, ranging from those casual comfort dishes to communal experiences like Ballpark at Home.

 “It’s guided toward having a baseball experience at your house,” he said. Using the two vans Rivera used for catering, he and his team deliver hot dog kits, garlic fries kits, peanuts, popcorn, Red Rope candy and beer. Then they set up a Zoom meeting and they all watch a vintage Seattle Mariners game together.

The price for that is $45 per person.

A more premium offer was an at-home camping trip, which was $225 for two people and included a tent, camping food such as trail mix, and a video that runs over the course of the evening that shows a virtual walk through the forest, the starting of a campfire and then wilderness noises for the customers to sleep by.

“It’s very involved,” Rivera said. “But it’s a different way to communicate with guests and get them excited about stuff.”

Addo has in the past operated as an incubator for other chefs to try things, and that continues with offerings such as cooking classes with other chefs, for which the ingredients are delivered and the classes are taught via Zoom.

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The multiple offerings have been successful enough that Rivera was able to go ahead with plans to offer his team medical insurance starting April 1.

Addo has a small team, fewer than 10 people, but they seem to have figured out how to extend the experiential dining that they created beyond the four walls of the restaurant.

Rivera said he doesn’t know how long his dining room will stay closed, but he said he’ll keep selling pantry items indefinitely. As for the new at-home experiences, “If people keep buying them, then, cool.”

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary

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About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary

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