How a Mediterranean grill in Fort Worth made changes to best serve families, seniors
Family dinner packs are one of the great success stories of 2020.
Three months after restaurants started offering take-out deals for two, four or six people during a pandemic, the party-pack dinners are not going away.
They’re safe and convenient for stay-home seniors, or for families with a vanload of kids. And — this is important — they’re good.
Bonnell’s $40 takeout dinners for four are some of the best takeout ever. Chef Lanny Lancarte II’s restaurant, Righteous Foods, turned an outstanding special into a new delivery service, Eat Fajitas.
“Customers with families are still staying home for dinner,” said Christina Lerma Elbitar of Chadra Mezza and Grill, a Mediterranean restaurant in Park Place Village near hospitals and the Fort Worth Zoo.
Chadra has table service on its back patio, but takeout remains the big seller.
The nightly specials include a family pack Thursdays with Chadra’s top-selling “heavenly chicken,” a stuffed chicken Alfredo with vegetables and salad, for $50; or chicken kabobs or shawarma Saturdays for $55.
Some restaurants pack takeout carefully. Some don’t. Chadra’s dinners are boxed carefully and microwaveable, so a couple or smaller family can save half for another night.
Chadra has sold more than 800 family packs, Elbitar said, including dinners for weary medical workers to take home for families.
“Our customers are still asking for them,” Elbitar said.
Obviously, family packs have been around a long time.
Lately, barbecue restaurants such as Coker’s Pit Bar-B-Q, Off the Bone BBQ, Railhead Smokehouse and Robinson’s Bar-B-Que have found new customers for their family dinner packs sold from safe drive-through windows.
Rufus Bar and Grill in Cityview, which opened during the pandemic, gained new business by selling “Billy Oaks” Woodrich’s chicken-fried steak or chicken-fried chicken family pack dinners for $40. Burgers, tacos and wings cost less.
And Joe T. García’s has been packing its old-time family-style combination or fajitas dinners to go for curbside takeout.
For Chadra’s owners, it was a tough pivot from running a restaurant, two smaller workplace lunch counters and catering to a new business model based on take-out.
Restaurants that didn’t have online ordering at first struggled with the load of phone calls, each customer asking, “What’s on the menu?”
Those restaurants with online menus or ordering sometimes struggled with the unpredictable pace of orders.
Chadra added website ordering early.
“The amount of phone calls and orders through the various media has been overwhelming,” Elbitar said.
“This was the hardest transition.”
Chadra now maintains five versions of its menu on different websites and apps in various formats. And that’s not even counting the time spent applying for small business grants, loans and the federal paycheck protection funding.
“We are grateful for the customers that continue to provide us with the support to keep our restaurant afloat,” Elbitar said.
The popular pizza-and-pasta buffet table is gone, at least through the year. (Serve-yourself buffets are banned as unsafe.)
But Chadra’s patio still serves plenty of “heavenly chicken,” kebabs and salads for the lunch and dinner crowd.
It’s open for lunch and dinner Wednesdays through Saturdays; 1622 Park Place Avenue, 817-926-3992, chadramezza.com.
This story was originally published June 8, 2020 at 5:45 AM.
