Luxury restaurants deliver
The new trend, observed mainly in the southern suburbs of Athens, is in-house dining with dishes doorstep-delivered by some of the finest restaurants in town, and in Covid-19 times to boot. Top-class chefs prepare gourmet dishes and have them delivered to customers who can afford bills starting from 300-400 euros per person which can often reach or exceed €1,000 if more people are to be catered for in a home setting.
Perhaps the best example of this business activity, which is gradually expanding to the center of the capital and the northern suburbs too, is Matsuhisa Athens in Vouliagmeni. Luxury vehicles set off every day from one of the restaurants of world-renowned chef Nobuyuki Matsuhisa to deliver very expensive orders to high-income customers in the broader area.
Several other restaurants offer similar delivery services for luxury dishes: Restaurateur Aris Vezenes’ Birdman started delivering Japanese bento boxes this summer, raising the bar for delivery and takeaway services in central Athens.
This niche is seeing such expansion that even the company that operates the historic Grande Bretagne and King George hotels and their restaurants including the Tudor Hall in the center of the capital is considering branching out into delivering gourmet meals to patrons who want to enjoy dishes from their menus for a number of people that would not justify a catering service – i.e. four to six.
Depending on what each customer requires, these services may also come complete with a waiter for hosting friends at home, with the safety demanded in the days of the pandemic and the quality of an expensive restaurant.
In other countries such services have been provided more years, enjoying great success and high profit margins. However, it is particularly interesting that such an expensive service should also start to emerge in Greece, a country with a comparatively limited market and a rather small number of households with such high incomes.
True, Matsuhisa Athens in particular benefits from the fact that there are a number of wealthy foreigners and Greeks living in its neighborhood, boosting its clientele.
