The pandemic has hit restaurants hard, but experts say the ‘ghost food hall’ concept might save them

In the early days of the novel coronavirus pandemic, D.C. restaurateur Aaron Gordon couldn’t sleep.

The world was shutting down around him, and he had closed his restaurants’ dining rooms in response to social distancing mandates. He worried about how he would put food on his family’s table when the business model he used to feed other people had transformed radically, nearly overnight.

“I realized that my restaurants — and any restaurants, in fact — were sort of doomed in the way they do business,” Gordon said.

Then he saw that takeout and delivery at Little Beast, his family-friendly pizzeria in the Chevy Chase neighborhood, was earning 110 percent of the restaurant’s pre-pandemic sales. Dine-in service at any of his restaurants was unlikely to provide adequate revenue for months, even years, Gordon mused, but a takeout and delivery-oriented establishment might thrive.