Your Favorite Delivery Options May All Come From a Shared Stove

Most nights at Oyster Bah, a small restaurant in Chicago’s tony Lincoln Park neighborhood, you can count on two things: serious seafood offerings (up to 12 different oyster varieties) and a packed house. The latter led Bill Nevruz, managing partner with Lettuce Entertain You Restaurants—a business that owns, licenses, or manages more than 100 restaurants across the country, including Oyster Bah—to look around the nautical-themed room, decorated with oars and lobster traps, and wonder: “Now what?”

In order to increase sales at the restaurant, Nevruz knew he needed to think outside its walls. “All of our seats are taken. But we weren’t necessarily pushing our throttle down for what we could execute out of our kitchen, because it’s a small restaurant. I thought to myself, how can we challenge our efficiency without adding more seats?”