why

Copenhagen restaurants contribute significantly to the good life. They bring people together, enhance surrounding neighborhoods, create jobs, promote responsible sourcing and consumption, attract tourists from around the world to the food mecca of Copenhagen, and generate billions of kroner in revenues.

On a daily basis, Copenhagen kitchens also orchestrate high levels of craft, quality, diversity, collaboration, and peak performance from which other kinds of teams and organizations have much to learn.

The same is true of many restaurants around the world. But the COVID-19 crisis has threatened the very reason restaurants exist—not just to serve food, but to promote social gathering and closeness. After nine months of uncertainty and the advent of a second lockdown, a good number of establishments are fighting for financial survival, the future is uncertain and employees at all levels are under considerable stress.

[Englobar]

“To embrace, to include, to encompass,
to comprehend, or to dedicate space and time.”

In the early days of the crisis, we talked a lot about the fact that there isn’t really a good word in English for what we want to preserve and help to thrive in and around Copenhagen restaurants—that ineffable quality that makes sharing food and drink such an elemental human and social experience.

The Spanish verb englobar comes really close. It means to embrace, to include, to encompass, to comprehend, or to dedicate space and time.

In the spirit of englobar, the bowline crew agreed on five key priorities that inspire and inform the initiatives we undertake:

Interconnectivity- We want to contribute to a more interconnected and collaborative restaurant community in Copenhagen and around the world. We want to help restaurants and the people who work in them to connect and to work more closely with other concerned actors and stakeholders, and to contribute to more livable urban environments and more responsible local communities.

Responsibility- We want to contribute to a more responsible food system characterized by local sourcing, healthy produce, environmental sensitivity, a more circular economy, and sustainable pricing. We also want to help build a more responsible food industry characterized by sustainable business models, less addiction to disruptive forms of tourism, equitable wages, healthy work/life balance, diversity in hiring and promotion, and a positive and challenging working environment.

Resilience- We want to help restaurants and the people who love them respond to the current crisis in ways that will generate new ideas and capabilities. We want to take advantage of the need to adapt and survive in ways that will foster far-reaching and much-needed conversations about systems change, and that will inspire the restaurant community to imagine new and alternative futures in collaboration with like-minded partners.

Learning- Learning is central to why we came together. We want to develop new models of learning in collaboration with a diverse range of partners in order to transform the future of the restaurant industry (and maybe even education itself). We want to partner with universities and researchers to explore what are the kinds of literacies people will need—financial literacy, cultural literacy, leadership literacy, literacy in conflict resolution and interpersonal communication—to contribute to this process of transformation.

Impact- We want to take collaborative action on concrete problems to exert transformative impact on the restaurant industry, now and into the future. We also want to work together with colleagues in the restaurant industry and other friends, in the spirit of englobar, to scale the solutions we generate and to exert transformative impact on other industries, and on the communities in which they operate.

more conversations about why

The School of Entrepreneurship at Copenhagen Business school cut these videos on Bowline last summer. Each one captures a different angle on our ongoing conversations about issues and challenges facing the restaurant industry—issues that are even more pressing seven months down the road and deeper into the crisis.

Establishing resilience for restaurants amid a global pandemic. Learn how two very different restaurants pivoted to “serve another day.”

Could large establishment/chain restaurants use the COVID-19 pandemic to cannibalize independents? What can restaurants do to remain resilient when challenges are piling up?

How, even in a crisis, the restaurant can be reinvented to ensure responsibility and sustainability come out ahead.

How COVID has shown a light on the instability of employment in the restaurant industry.

Finding opportunity in chaos. How the Bowline group collaborated with Copenhagen Business School to launch a survey ad ended up tapping into a global social movement.

Reexamining leadership in restaurants, Bowline and CBS combine an academic approach and learning by doing to cultivate leadership in the kitchen and beyond.