On the morning of 17 March 2020, we woke up to find ourselves in a whole new world. It was a sad day in our lives, because from that day on, all our restaurants were closed indefinitely.
Our 40 year old group has been through many fundamental historical and market changes. Ilona and Peter had to cope with the difficulties of socialism and then took advantage of the opportunities offered by the change of regime. We have coped with the economic crisis of the 1990s, the currency crisis of 1999, the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, and just a year after Roy joined the family business full of enthusiasm, determination and plan, the crisis of the century, the global financial crisis of 2008, arrived. We fought through the difficulties and survived.
In the late 2010s we welcomed record numbers of guests, people were happy to travel and eat in our restaurants.
Then in February 2020, you could sense that something very serious, something very different was coming.
At the beginning of 2020, we were full of hope and optimism that we would soon overcome the emerging pandemic.
It did not.
After the shock of the first three months, we came to our senses and used our surplus capacity to innovate. From the start of the closures, we worked on how our wonderful food could be served at home without any deterioration in quality, restaurant quality, because as we know, when ready meals are delivered, where often the courier has the food for 20-30 minutes, there is a deterioration in quality.
By November 2020, we have managed to develop a home-delivery system where food arrives at homes 90-95% ready, vacuum packed, leaving only the finishing and serving to be done at home, which takes only 5-10 minutes.
In effect, we've brought the joy of cooking to households, without the laborious parts - with Zsidai Home.
During the closures, this project kept a whole team alive. We learned a lot from it, it gave us a lot, and it is still with us today: you can still order it on Kifli.hu.
Although we look back on the closures with a heavy heart, there was one positive thing: an innovation, Zsidai Home.