Rick Bayless Talks About Keeping His Brand Spicy During a Pandemic

Rick Bayless is a lot of things. A renowned chef, an author, an educator and a world traveler. 

But at the end of the day, he is also an independent restaurant owner. Sure, he has a few more Michelin stars than most. But like all restaurant owners this year, even he wasn’t spared the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic, dining room capacity restrictions and making sure his customers and employees stayed healthy and safe. 

The heart of his dining empire consists of four Mexican establishments in Chicago’s River North neighborhood, including Frontera Grill, the upscale Topolobampo, fast-casual Xoco and Bar Sotono. But he also has various licensing agreements for other establishments, including a soon-to-open New York location of his Tortazo sandwich concept. 

In other words, he had to keep that mole flowing during the pandemic. 1851 talked to Bayless about leadership in these times, and how he managed to create a robust takeout program for upscale cuisine while remaining true to his brand’s identity. 

1851 Franchise: When COVID-19 hit, how did you pivot your business? 

Rick Bayless: Wow, it was really hard because I've never been a takeout person in my life. In 33 years, we had never done any takeout from Frontera. It doesn't come very easily to me. We developed our place called Xoco to do takeout from day one — it's basically a sandwich shop. We were starting from scratch with Frontera. And you’re talking to a person who has never ordered a takeout pizza in his life! 

1851: What were the challenges?

Bayless: I believe that if you're going to do to-go food, it's got to be up to the quality that people expect from us. We put a whole lot of effort into it. So we only offered things that we thought could be easily reheated and made into a meal that was worthy of the Frontera name. We developed all kinds of really careful reheating instructions. We're also very ecologically oriented, so we made sure all of our packaging was either compostable or easily recyclable. It was a lot of work.

1851: What were the challenges beyond the physical demands maintaining quality? 

Bayless: Part of what you expect when you come to Frontera is something that's infused with my personality. So we put a QR code in all the orders that will take you straight to our Spotify channel, where customers can put on the music you would hear in our restaurants. I wanted to create sort of the whole experience because I'm a restaurant person through and through. I think when you go to a restaurant, it’s not just to fill up because you're hungry — you go for a much broader experience. 

1851: As more people are vaccinated and restrictions are relaxed, do you expect off-premise efforts to continue?

Bayless: Most independent restaurants learned they had several income streams and not just indoor dining. So I think that yes, a lot of people have learned that there can be other revenue streams. For instance, we have a Media Group at Frontera that handles social media. Suddenly, [after the restaurants’ dining room closed], we didn't have any money to pay them. So we pivoted very quickly and spun them to a YouTube subscription channel. So then there's another revenue stream coming in from that to help offset their cost. I think a lot of people have figured out a lot of different ways to bring money in. Most people will protect that for at least the near future. Because we all realize that the world is unpredictable. 

1851: Sounds like you really got creative fast.

Bayless: In hindsight, it sounds methodical and planned out, but it felt like we were flailing most of the time. So it sounds way, way nicer than it was. It was not an easy pivot. There was a lot of throwing the spaghetti against the wall. It was like opening a new restaurant every week.

1851: Your business relies on farmers’ business. How has the pandemic affected the farmers in the Midwest?

Bayless: The pandemic devastated most of the small farms. If a farmer was focused on providing products to restaurants, restaurants basically went out of business for a while. The sad thing was that the pandemic and lockdowns started in March after everybody had bought their seeds and started planning what crops to plant. If a farmer couldn't pivot fast enough to go direct-to-consumer, they were just devastated. 

But I think some of our farmers did better than they were expecting to do because they've found a direct-to-consumer market. It's kind of funny, because now some farmers who developed a direct-to-consumer channel and found it worthwhile are telling us they don't really want to supply restaurants because they're afraid the restaurants are just too unstable.

For more on how Rick Bayless is helping farmers through the Frontera Farmer Foundation, check out the second half of his interview with our sister publication, Room 1903.