Give your guests the restaurant experience at home

Charming Restaurant Söl in Stavanger.

Restaurant Söl in Stavanger was established in 2018 by three young chefs: Nayana Engh, Claes Helbak and Magnus Haugland Paaske. After working in top-tier restaurants, they wanted to create a restaurant together, where pure and Nordic flavors would dominate. The three chefs give guests a complete taste experience, while making guests feel like they are visiting someone, and not just something. When the corona pandemic became a fact, the three chefs sat down together to figure out: “What do we do now?” Giving guests a “Söl experience” at home in their own kitchen, in the form of a pre-packed lunch box, was supposed to be the solution.

Three chefs = Söl! From left: Claes Helbak, Nayana Engh and Magnus Haugland Paaske.

We can't just go home!

After Nayana, Claes and Magnus had watched the first press conference together on March 12th and realized that the country was really in lockdown, it was clear that locking the door and going on 100% layoffs was out of the question. By March 13th, the plan to launch Restaurant Söl's own food box was ready. "If the guests can't come to us, we'll have to come to the guests," was the clear message from the chef trio. The chefs set about composing meals that could give guests a true Söl experience at home on their kitchen counter, and the food boxes were an immediate success.

A box of Söl

For the Söl chefs, it was very important to develop the lunch boxes so that the dishes they contained would provide a genuine and full Söl experience, even if the food was prepared and eaten in the guest's own kitchen. The winning recipe was to prepare the most complex and "difficult" parts of the dishes in the Söl kitchen and let the guests simply heat up and finish cooking the food at home. The dishes are selected and prepared so that they maintain a very high quality all the way from the restaurant kitchen to when they are ready to be cooked at the guest's home. "Selling food that does not meet our high quality standards would only have ruined the Söl brand," explains Magnus. "If you are going to offer lunch boxes, you must never take any shortcuts." He also says that other important success factors for success with lunch boxes are to offer good dinner portions that fill you up. Söl's lunch boxes are also reasonably priced, so that guests feel they are getting a lot for their money. The lunch boxes from Restaurant Söl range from fish soup to 135,- per portion of skrei with shellfish sauce for 190,-. "It would really be good to make it cheaper at home," says Magnus, "many customers have noticed this, and we are impressed by the response we have received! "

The food in the lunch boxes is almost ready prepared in the restaurant. The guest puts the finishing touches in their own kitchen at home. Photo and chef: Lise Marzcenko

The food bank secured jobs

Although Söl is a fairly new restaurant, it has gained a good foothold in Stavanger. Many guests quickly became regulars who in turn recommended the restaurant to their friends. When the lunch box was launched, the concept was an immediate success, and was to have a decisive impact on the restaurant. “If we hadn’t started with our lunch boxes, the only alternative would have been to lay off 100% of our staff,” says Magnus. “Instead, the lunch boxes ensured us a turnover so that we were able to keep the wheels turning and not have to lock the door completely.” He also says that Stavanger also experienced good summer months with almost normal operations, but that the focus on the lunch boxes has been the glue between normal and abnormal. “The lunch boxes have clearly been a major contributor to our ability to maintain the operation of our restaurant at Söl, and have also secured our jobs. It is quite clear that our guests miss us and really appreciate being able to fill the waiting time until normality returns with some good flavors from their regular restaurant,” concludes Magnus.

Contact us Systemkjøp to hear more about activities you and your catering establishment can do during the corona period. See everything that has been made in connection with Covid19 here