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[title]The lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a heavy toll on restaurants, particularly fine-dining establishments that rely on intimate service and personal engagement between chefs and diners. No amount of delivery or takeaway orders can compensate for the full fine-dining experience at a restaurant. But what if you can bring this experience to the homes of diners? This is the concept behind Fruitfull, an at-home dining series createdby Pranitan “Pete” Phornprapha, Founder and CEO of Wonderfruit music festival, and Perm Paitayawat, the celebrated food writer behind the insightful food blog The Skinny Bib. In Fruitfull’s first run, called Lockdown, the two collaborated with celebrated Thai and international chefs (such as Japanese chef Yusuke Takada of La Cime, British chef Jeremy Chan of Ikoyi and Danish-Korean chef Kristian Baumann of Restaurant 108, as well Thai chefs Garima Arora of Gaa and Prin Polsuk of Samrub for Thai) to bring food of fine-dining quality to people’s homes. To enhance the experience, they set up live-streamed sessions that included personalized messages from the chefs themselves and other interactive videos.
Time Out sat down with the resourceful minds behind Fruitfull and found out how fine dining from your couch can work.
How did Fruitfull come about?
Pranitan: Food has always been [integral] to Wonderfruit. We registered the brand Fruitfull in 2017 and tried to think of what we can do with it, but we were so busy with Wonderfruit and we didn’t have a bandwidth to do it. I was determined that 2020 was going to be the year we spun off Fruitfull. Although I like food, I don’t have enough knowledge and insight on it. Perm’s name came up from someone in my team. I am not on [social media] so I had to do a bit of dive into his Instagram. Right away, I knew Perm was not your typical food blogger—his posts are very thoughtful. We share a similar trait—the belief that everything has to be well- thought out. So I got in touch with Perm through Chef Bo and Dylan [of Bo.lan]. They also thought that Perm would be a good addition to the team.
At first, it was meant to be a physical event, a hyper food festival with multiple stages representing something different but each one tied to a common DNA. Then COVID came. We imagined how we would do food in an apocalyptic situation. We mentioned this to Perm and he became excited with the possibility of what it can be given the situation.
Perm: It was actually Pete’s idea to do things both offline and online. We were in a situation where people were losing connection with one another. Most people who were planning to do physical events, [either] related to food or music, postponed what they were doing. Pete jumped into a completely different wagon. [He thought] let’s make something that happens online and integrate what Wonderfruit [does]—endorsing interactive experiences and making food exciting.
How did you bring on board these international chefs?
Perm: The difficulty was that this platform was such a new thing for us and for the chefs. The chefs we asked to join are not necessarily famous but they’re chefs who share the same vision as ours. And we agreed with them on how this vision should be represented. It was sort of a reciprocal relationship that’s mainly based on trust. Generally, when we do collaborations, the goal is commercial gain or a level of networking that will facilitate exposure or awareness. For this one, we didn’t have a set standard of what we can actually offer them. It was just something different and came from someone who they can trust to represent them correctly.
What challenges did you have to endure?
Perm: One of the biggest challenges was manpower. We tried to minimize the headcount in everything—in the kitchen, for packing and dispatching, and with the live-streaming team. [Also], you have to deal with top-level chefs who have a complicated vision of what they want [which could sometimes be] unrealistic. We wanted to make sure that they were presented properly, meaning there were a lot more things to pack than usual.
This may have started a trend for fine dining in the future. How do you feel about this?
Pranitan: To be honest, when we discussed this concept, the fact that we were setting trend was not a priority. We were just focused on trying to do something that was "thoughtful", and to create cross-collaboration.
Perm: I don’t think of this as a trend. It’s an alternative. Whether people are going to make a trend of it or not, it depends on circumstances in the future. We just want to partially solve a problem. We also want to bring livelihood to the people.
After the Lockdown series, what can people expect from Fruitfull?
Pranitan: The brand Fruitfull was born before COVID-19. The virus just prompted us to make sense of the situation. Now, the situation is fluid. COVID is still pretty much around and I think the world has definitely changed. Fruitfull will continue to innovate and come up with ways on how we can be thoughtfully engaging, and how to use food, culture and art to create a meaningful dialogue.
What do you think will happen to the dining industry?
Pranitan: The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed a lot of weaknesses in restaurants. A lot of restaurants were not set up to weather any type of storm. Now, they will rethink that. Fundamentally, the first thing that comes to a lot of restaurant is to come up with a new business model.
Perm: The food industry will find its way to creatively evolve. [Fruitfull] is part of that. Each culture has a different concept of what they feel restaurants need to be. In Thailand we adapted quickly by turning everything takeaway because it’s part of our culture as well as many parts of Asia. We have seen many restaurants quickly adapting to this takeaway system. If we look at Europe, restaurants are restaurants. They would not embrace something like this right away because it’s not part of their culture nor the restaurant’s mentality. In each part of the world, the restaurant industry will creatively evolve at different levels.
