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Crisis as Opportunity: An 'Aha Moment' in a Struggle to Survive

The economic damage left in the wake of Covid-19 has yet to be fully realized. As we have seen with many independent operators, some of the best ideas are brought to light hidden under the veil of crisis and held on by the strings of hope, vision and opportunity.

Chef Lisa Dahl is the proprietor of Sedona, Arizona-based Dahl Restaurant Group, and its five award-winning restaurants. She recently launched "Dahl-to-Door," where her prepared foods are made fresh and shipped frozen across the nation.

"This is something we had talked about, and I had thought about for years. Many people from around the country have always adored our soups and our sauces and said, 'I wish I could get this shipped to me,' or, 'I wish I could get this year-round.' So, I had always had that in the back of my mind and thought it would make a good business."

If everything works out, I will stay with this because I think the need will forever be there. It's not something that has to be tied into just crisis times.

In the midst of the crisis her first thought was, "How can we stay busy? How can we keep our employees busy, and how can we fill a need? And her "big aha moment" was Dahl-to-Door. Dahl selected a small group of products that were akin to this type of business model. "We sent some out, we tested things. We tested it ourselves, of course." Although it's still in its infancy, to date, the process has been seamless. "I started receiving emails from people right off the bat and all the messages have been positive. I feel good about it. I'm nervous, but I feel good about it."

After Dahl shut down her restaurants on March 20th, her current business model changed drastically as well. "We had to limit our offerings. I shrunk the menus to more than 50% and included just the top-selling items." Although four of her five restaurants are currently offering curbside, she also had to shrink her team. "We went from 320 employees down to 43." In the end, she endured a loss of over 80% of her workforce.

But she sees this crisis as an opportunity. "If everything works out, I will stay with this because I think the need will forever be there. It's not something that has to be tied into just crisis times. It's something that I felt that my products would be received well. But, I would say there's nothing like a crisis."

"I look at everything I've ever done in the years as a spiritual opportunity. My dream has always been to find a way to be ultimately philanthropic. This led her to create "Project Soup Hope."

"Whenever there was a big crisis like Katrina or many of the hurricanes, fires, we would use it as an opportunity to support others. Our soups are so well known that we would take revenue from the restaurants' soups and send 50% to many causes. When we first launched it, we gave $40,000 that year towards causes, but we didn't have our own not-for-profit [organization]."

Dahl pledges to give a portion of her profits to people who are in situations of need. Among her creations is what she calls "the universal soup of love. It's a vegan soup. I'm hoping that it will have every nutritional aspect that it can have, to create a soup that anyone that has it will feel completely sustained nutritionally, and in every way."

Lisa also recognizes that dreams take a different form at times. "It's just funny how small the world seems when we're a situation like this, and all of a sudden, new things are birthing, but yet you realize that there's so many ways that you can help. There's nothing you can say short of miraculous because it's always been such a team effort."