Pre-shift, “family” meals are a longtime tradition in the restaurant industry.
At My Brother’s Bar, the long-running spot at 15th and Platte streets in Denver, some of its best-selling items have come from staff experiments before the doors open, including the jalapeño cream cheese-laden Johnny Burger.
But eating your own food day in and day out can get tiresome. Thatap why Brother’s owner and tech entrepreneur Danny Newman recently launched Shift Meal, a site for restaurant owners to upload and exchange e-gift cards.
“Itap an easy way to get new folks trying new things, and itap great low-fee, no-fee marketing,” said Newman, who bought the bar in 2017.
Restaurateurs who create an account on the site can upload however much they want in e-gift cards. Then, they’re able to pick from a pool of other spots that have done the same on the Shift Meal site, either for themselves or to give to employees.
At Brother’s, Newman said he’s done this informally for years, trading his sandwiches for Proto’s pizza or, before it closed, cones from Inside Scoop. Shift Meal is a way to broaden and organize those deals, Newman said.
“Thousands of dollars” in meals have been exchanged in the three or so weeks Shift Meal has been live, Newman said. Twenty local spots have signed up already, including Chook Charcoal Chicken, Hapa Sushi, Yacht Club and Redeemer Pizza. In the coming weeks, he’s also meeting with local restaurant industry groups EatDenver and Boulder Restaurant Alliance.
Newman said the gift card sharing will help promote different spots by word of mouth. And offering smaller amounts can help get people in the door, where they rack up an additional bill.
“If I’ve got friends coming to town, I can grab a gift card for the four of us. We’re going to use that $25 or $50 gift card to get us there and then spend extra money while we’re there,” he said.
Newman charges a “minimal” fee to keep Shift Meal going. But he only takes it in gift card money so restaurants aren’t giving up anything tangible. It is the first site, to his knowledge, made for this purpose.
“My goal here is just to explore and promote all the spots,” he said.
He plans to keep it business-to-business. At a time when the local, full-service scene is struggling in Denver, finding ways to get people in your doors at little to no cost is ideal.
“I think it expands slightly beyond restaurants to other verticals where this could ultimately be a local B2B marketing platform,” he said. “But I don’t think it makes sense to go public. By name and by design itap very much this restaurant/hospitality focus.”
A downtick in business amid a rise in expenses is also a key reason Newman started Shift Meal.
With Denver losing 6% of its establishments and 15% of full-service spots since 2020, Newman said he thinks Shift Meal’s gift cards can help bridge the gap.
“We truly had a burgeoning world-class restaurant scene in Denver, but we also had the middle-priced, comfort, classic spots to go to. Just good, affordable service-industry spots,” he said.
“And those have been the first to disappear, which is so upsetting,” he continued. “So this is one of those ‘for us, by us’ attempts to do what we can to re-spark that scene.”
At Brother’s, Newman said sales have plateaued in recent years, though he declined to offer specifics. He’s had to raise menu prices every other year since 2020.
“The top line might not be showing a bad picture, but guests are down,” he said. “For every $100 (spent pre-COVID), it was made up by 10 guests. Now, that $100 is made up by five guests.”
Another change he made to supplement income was adding a Sunday brunch service last year.
He’d been hesitant to do that because he liked giving staff the weekend day off in an industry where thatap not the norm. But Newman said that, despite the limited hours compared with a normal weekday, it added 15% to Brother’s sales at a time when he and other owners are looking to cut as much as they could.
“Shift Meal is a direct response to what restaurants locally are facing, and a reason why we built it was to help each other,” he said. “Itap purely there to help raise all boats.”
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