The postcovid popup boom, explained.

This video is presented by Verizon Business. Verizon Business has no editorial influence on our videos, but their support makes videos like these possible.

From 2021 to 2022, one specific type of restaurant grew 105% in the US: popups, or temporary restaurants. From 2022 to 2023 there were 155% more popups. If you’re a foodie in a US city, it’s made the diversity of food you can get today higher than ever before. Why are so many chefs deciding to "pop up' all of a sudden?

To find out, we talked to the owners of two New York City popups to get their stories. For Jorge Aguilar & Amanda Rosa, chef & coowners of the breakfast taco popup Border Town, their story starts in the pandemic. They were unemployed, and instead of trying to rent a space and open a brick and mortar restaurant, they started working temporary locations, marketing themselves via instagram. Eric Huang, chef and owner of Pecking House, a Sichuanstyle fried chicken pandemic popup that became a brick and mortar restaurant, told us a similar story.

So how did these restaurateurs pivot during difficult times to ultimately find success?

Links and further reading:

Emma Orlow who we spoke to for this video is a writer for Eater. You can read her work here: https://www.eater.com/authors/emmaorlow

An awesome foodie newsletter we subscribed to while making this video: http://sweetcity.substack.com/

Other popups we spoke to: https://austin.eater.com/2024/6/3/241... https://natecox.net/BIGCHUNE2

Yelp’s state of the restaurant industry 2024: https://data.yelp.com/stateofthere...

Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com.

Watch our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE
Follow Vox on Facebook: http://goo.gl/U2g06o
Or Twitter: http://goo.gl/XFrZ5H