SurveyS & Findings
STATISTICS ARE ALWAYS THE BEGINNING OF A CONVERSATION, NOT THE FINAL WORD.
25th of Jan 2021
”Calling All Restaurants and friendly spaces.”
A short questionnaire to get connected and address the immediate concerns among proprietors and staff alike. Your answers will act as guideline for immediate and future Bowline actions. The questionnaire consists of a few initial data points and 4 questions.
This questionnaire coincides with the publication of video testimonials and a general invitation to connect, lend an ear and share ideas.
The findings and access to data will be available here.
This questionnaire is available in: Dansk ● English ● Español ● Française ● Italiano→
WHY
Restaurants contribute significantly to the good life. They bring people together, enhance surrounding neighborhoods, create jobs, promote responsible sourcing and consumption.
But the COVID-19 crisis has threatened the very reason they exist—not just to serve food, but to promote social gathering and closeness. After nine months of uncertainty and a second lockdown (at least in Denmark), a good number of restaurants are fighting for financial survival, the future is uncertain and employees at all levels are under considerable stress.
By connecting, publishing data, and posting conversations and dispatches from kitchens in Copenhagen and around the world, we can support and acknowledge each other as an industry. We can also raise industry concerns to a wider audience, we can learn together, and we can strengthen and support each other in anticipation of that sweet moment when we can throw open our doors again and let the light back in.
3rd of July 2020
“A seat at the table: A survey on dining out in the time of Corona
When we launched this initial survey in early May 2020, the response was overwhelming. Aside from producing very useful data, the survey also sparked conversations and initiatives with fellow industry members, patrons and friends from academia.
Equally important, the survey functioned as a tool to mobilize concern, and we heard from 4500 people in just 72 hours.
In an effort to keep the conversation going and growing, and to continue to spark new insights, we relaunched the survey, with the help of a few community champions, in five new languages: Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, French and Spanish.
To mind our statistical manners a bit better, these new surveys askedtwo new demographic questions so that we could better derive and relay insights for the wider community.
You can read the findings and an analysis below.
22nd of June 2020
Behind the numbers
An Analysis by
Daniel Hardt AND
Jan Michael Bauer,
Department of Management,
Society and Communication.
The Copenhagen Business School.
In the spirit of open source information and impact generation we consulted with a few statistics experts so that collectively we could deliver back to you insights from our initial survey. We hope you find this insightful and useful in reestablishing in this new corona world. We also hope it contributes to the conversation around and beyond the table.
15th of May 2020
STATISTICS ARE ALWAYS THE BEGINNING OF A CONVERSATION, NOT THE FINAL WORD.
We are grateful for more than 4600 responses we have received to our survey in just four days.
Roughly half of those who have responded live in Denmark. The rest of you hail from 25 different countries around the world.
We posted this survey to take the pulse of what concerned people were thinking and feeling, and to spark a dialogue about how we can help the restauration and hospitality community grapple with the many challenges they face both here and now, and in the months ahead.
For this same reason we want to make our data available to everyone, and invite you to dive in and help us draw conclusions.
Link to the Google Forms summary →
Notes to the forms summary:
· The first pie chart displays the total number of responses.
· Then the English language responses follows.
· Scroll and the Danish language responses will appear.
Please take some time to read the context and background for our survey we have provided on this page.
If you want to dig deeper, and especially if you can help us interpret this material further, you are welcome to write to us and request a csv file of our data
(the data is anonymised).
Just a few words to put the data in perspective.
We didn’t ask people for demographic info about their age, education, or income - standard survey questions that would have helped us infer more about the representative nature of our respondents.
And speaking of samples, we didn’t distribute our survey to a randomized or representative cross-section of a delimited population - we let the word spread around social media and catch fire that way.
This is why we heard from so many people. But we need to remember that not all those who love restaurants have an Instagram account, and that we therefore haven’t heard from everyone.
.. the data is more descriptive than inferential.
For these reasons, our friends and colleagues who are experts in statistics tell us that our data is more descriptive than inferential. It describes what a very enthusiastic group of food lovers and restaurant supporters with social media connections are thinking and feeling about dining out again.
Think of our survey as a massive but specialized focus group. This already provides some very important information - on a scale we hadn’t anticipated - and our expert friends remind us that statistics are always the beginning of a conversation, not the final word.
We hope that statistics experts and others can dig into our results to make some cautious inferences about the broader population and keep the conversation going.
We will continue to collect and to work with this data as well.
Here are some preliminary conclusions we can already draw with confidence:
1. People who care about restaurants care A LOT.
They are very concerned about COVID-19, but they want restaurants to open again, and they want find ways to support them.
2. People understand the risks, and they are learning fast about the science.
We can see in our data that those who responded are already very knowledgeable. For example, our respondents clearly know that experts agree that frequent and rigorous hand washing is more hygienic than wearing gloves[1].
And the written comments are FULL of whip-smart analysis and some great ideas, so check them out.
We need to keep sharing information, asking good questions, and learning more.
We will keep updating the resources page on this website to try to help in that regard.
3. Interconnectivity is the key.
The interconnected nature of our world has helped fan the flames of the COVID-19 crisis.
But the response to our survey tells us that connecting together in new ways - with proper levels of physical distance and care, of course - will also help us adapt to this new normal, and to help our restaurants and our communities to thrive.
[1]
“The dirty hand in the latex glove” →”Washing Away Misconceptions” →