Just a few years ago, food halls were christened as the next big thing in foodservice. Like food trucks, every city had to have one and consumers had to be seen eating at one. Unfortunately for food halls, the COVID-19 pandemic was kind of like the anti-food hall; food halls are all about socialization, which is exactly what we lost with COVID.
Reed Allen Slobusky had opened a food hall, Hall Pass in Salt Lake City, just before COVID-19 hit. But Slobusky—the founder of seven-unit fast casual SkinnyFats, which is one of the Hall Pass vendors—found a way to adapt the hall to the pandemic's new realities, and has even found a way to leverage Hall Pass as a sort of test kitchen for SkinnyFats and other concepts.
Slobusky joins the podcast to talk about Hall Pass, his partnership on the business with chef Marc Marrone, and why even in an age of the off-premises boom he's determined to create a foodservice business that customers have to experience for themselves.
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