//Phase Two: what to do and where to eat?

With New York heading into Phase 2 of reopening next week, there’s a lot of “Do we?” or “Don’t we?” questions bouncing around.

Phase Two means outdoor dining options, some in-store shopping, hair salons, barbershops, real estate firms and offices in the city now have a real, tangible option of reopening. From a community standpoint, Phase Two means some of our favorite local spots are reopening and hoping back in the game – are things going to start shifting back to normal?!

Eh, maybe.

There is still a very real threat of a potential second wave of the virus showing face, so really it’s still better to take the, “better safe than sorry” approach. AKA – maintain social distance, keep that nose and mouth covered, and keep things virtual when possible. This also means that even though restaurants are starting to open outdoor seating, it’s still better to remain cautious and continue to make takeaway the primary restaurant interaction.

So while NYC is still in this strange COVID-19 limbo, it’s still possible to continue to support your community and be an active part in the uplift and regrounding of your favorite spots. To take your active stance further, why not make it a point to support even more specifically the black restaurant owners in your community?

Check out some of our black-owned NYC restaurant recommendations below.

Sisters Painkiller

Sisters

Clinton Hill

Chic cafe by day, cool bar, restaurant and music venue by night. Their menu is an eclectic New American style with something for everyone.

[I’d totally be down for a Sisters Painkiller right now.]

Takeout available on Caviar or by calling them directly 347-763-2537

Due to COVID-19, Sisters recommends keeping an eye on their Instagram for updates on menus and hours of operation.

Melba’s

Harlem

After taking down celebrity chef, Bobby Flay, in a Throwdown – Melba’s founder, Melba Wilson, continues her reign as the Queen of Comfort Food.

[Comfortizers?! Gotta get a hand in some of that fried catfish!]

Takeout available on Seamless or by calling them directly 212-864-7777

Personalized Bowl from Urban Vegan Kitchen

Urban Vegan Kitchen

West Village

Comfort food, but make it vegan. Urban Kitchen was founded by NYC’s most successful vegan restaurateur, Pamela Elizabeth.

[Chili cheese fries! No wait, a burrito sounds good. Or do we go for chick-un waffles?!]

Takeout available on Postmates, Seamless, GrubHub, DoorDash, & ChowNow.

Harlem Shake

Harlem

The old school interior of Harlem Shake perfectly matches its satisfying menu of rich milkshakes and one of a kind hamburgers.

[10/10 for whoever can guess the cost of the Dimepeice combo.]

Takeout available on Seamless, GrubHub, UberEats, DoorDash, Delivery.com, & ToastTab.

Pie from Brown Butter

Brown Butter

BedStuy

Myriam Nicolas’s Brown Butter Craft Bar & Kitchen has brunch lovers and southern comfort food aficionados ready to chow down.

[I honestly can’t stop looking at the pie pics #drooling]

Takeout available on their website.

Sweet Chick

Williamsburg + Lower East Side

Sweet Chick brands themselves as “New American Comfort” and with fun cocktails and bomb fried chicken…they’re doing it right.

[Hi, yes, I’ll take one – make that two – Purple Dranks pls!]

Takeout available on GrubHub: Lower East Side Link & Williamsburg Link.

Above we only mentioned six restaurants, but we found this app called EatOkra that shows you a wide selection of black-owned businesses across the country. You can download the app on both Apple and Android.

//Wine, perfume, and a good time – our first Creative Talk

On December 4th, 2019, we hosted the first event of our new event series Creative Talks which deep-dives into one topic pertaining to one of our key expertise areas: Design, Communications and Events.

Our inaugural Creative Talk revolved about the transformation of retail spaces from point of sales to storytelling platforms. We invited industry leaders and opinion makers to participate and share their insights and perspectives on the topic of the day.

Our guest speakers were Nick Arauz, CEO of Caswell-Massey – the oldest personal care product brand in America that more or less used George Washington for its first “influencer” campaign – and Tyler Balliet, CEO and Founder of Rosé Mansion – one of New York’s most popular pop-up experiences that combines wine tasting with relevant stories and instagrammable moments.

Check out the highlights here:

//What’s for lunch? Navigating Midtown’s foodscape in the age of reward points and subscription services

The typical desk lunch has been a staple of the American office culture for a long time. Here at OSK New York, we handle things a bit differently. Lunch is a thing. Our team sits down to eat together at our long dining table with proper place settings and coffee and chocolate as dessert. We mostly talk about work-unrelated topics: what’s happening on the weekend, the latest episode of The Handmaid’s Tale or the difference between the American and German school system. As studies show that taking an actual break from work increases performance and creativity, we take lunch very seriously to make sure that we reach peak productivity.

People either bring their own lunches or go and get something in the sea of food options available in our neighborhood. Every day approximately 3.1 million people go to work in Manhattan with a big chunk headed to office buildings in Midtown East. And starting from 11:30 a.m., people swarm out of those buildings to the many restaurants, food halls, delis and bowl places to get their food.

With ever increasing lunch prices – now starting at approx. $12 for a salad – it can get quite pricey to buy lunch every single day. But luckily, it’s 2019 and there is an app for that – or actually two.

The apps we’re looking at are not the usual food delivery apps such as Seamless, UberEats, or DoorDash. These two apps have emerged and established themselves as the lunch apps of the moment that a good amount of people in Manhattan, and also of our team, has subscribed to.

Subscribe!

For the first of these apps, subscription is actually the key word. MealPal is a meal subscription service that was founded in 2016 and is now operating in markets in the US, Canada, and Australia. In New York, it’s gaining more and more traction as you can tell by the number of food places setting up the MealPal QR Code on their counters.

How does it work? Users pay a monthly subscription fee that includes 12 or 20 lunches. You go into the app, pick the dish you want from a participating restaurant, select a pick-up time, and reserve your meal. Lucky for us, the majority of the restaurants around our office is participating so there are plenty of options.

It’s a good deal for everyone who participates: Restaurants get a predictable and confirmed number of customers and can optimize their food prep by making a large amount of the same dish. Diners get a subsidized meal for about half the price of a regular lunch and don’t have to wait in lines. And MealPal makes a margin on each order and can collect consumer data to optimize their offering.

Feather’s website: A subscription service that lets you rent furniture on a monthly basis

MealPal is the latest incarnation of the subscription service trend. This trend once started with music and video streaming services, and has now taken over almost every imaginable industry. Only to name a few: There is ClassPass for workout sessions, Blue Apron for home-cooked meals, Burst for toothbrushes, Misfits for organic vegetables, Feather for furniture, Birchbox for beauty products, JustFab for clothes, and Nike for kids’ shoes.

According to a report by McKinsey, the subscription e-commerce market has grown by more than 100% annually over the past five years. The target audience of these subscription services are often younger and affluent customers in urban areas that appreciate the convenience and discounted price they get in exchange for their commitment. MealPal hits that sweet spot with both a convenient and affordable offer.

Subscriptions per se are not a new thing. Monthly cable bills have been around forever and everyone at some point in their lives probably has had a magazine or newspaper subscription. However, the unexpected combination of a subscription with products that you never thought about subscribing to before, but that you actually do need on a regular basis, is what is new and appealing. And the possibilities are endless. 

Gimme points!

The second app that we have recently discovered is called Ritual. Ritual was founded in Toronto in 2014 and expanded to the US three years later. Last month, they ran a promotion for $1 lunches that made us all sign up. Initially we expected that everyone would stop using it after the promotion ends. But surprise, we are still ordering food through Ritual.

Ritual rewards: With Elite status, you get more points per purchase

How so? At first sight, there is nothing new about Ritual. You use the app to make an order and then go pick it up when it’s ready so you don’t have to wait in line. It also asks you to join your company team so that you get notifications when one of your co-workers makes an order. This way, you can piggyback on their order and they can pick it up for you along with their own order. This saves you a trip through the masses of people on Midtown streets during lunchtime. 

Apart from their sporadic $1 lunch promotions and regular $5 off from selected restaurants, Ritual has a rewards points system. And this is where it gets interesting. In a society where people are obsessed with collecting points and read The Points Guy like a bible, Ritual offers an advantage over other food ordering apps and proprietary apps.

Most restaurants and food places have a reward system in place that for example gives you a free meal after ten purchases. These reward systems, however, are all specific to each place and unless you go to the same lunch spot every day, it takes quite a while until you actually get a reward.

Dedicated shelf space for Ritual and MealPal at Just Salad on 3rd Ave & 40th St

With Ritual, you collect points in the same system no matter where you order, which allows you to get to a reward much more quickly. This universal reward system in combination with its regular discounts, presents a big draw. 

Both MealPal and Ritual have found a unique selling point to set them apart from the well-established food ordering apps. They have even amassed a big enough of a user base to prompt some places in Midtown to set up designated shelves so that their users can easily find their orders and pass by the line of people ordering in store. 

How we get our lunches will probably change again within the next year or even the next few months. But for the moment, even though we don’t know what is for lunch, we know that there is an app for that – or actually two.

//Welcome to the world of OSK New York!

Hi everyone!

Welcome to the world of OSK New York! You might have seen our website where we showcase our best work and talk about our impressive skill set – but this is not the same thing just in a slightly different format.

Our blog will introduce you to our micro cosmos, the world of OSK New York: NYC agency life meets creative/fun ideas meets relevant topics of local and global scale.

Expect to see impressions from the latest and greatest of our travel and adventures, our thoughts on new trends and cultural issues, topics that are of interest to us due to our work or personal backgrounds, and simply fun stuff. We will touch on anything from experiential pop-up spaces, flying cars, and PR stunts to food halls, the curviest roads to drive on, and the environment.

Our team consists of highly organized and wildly creative individuals who have lived and worked on four continents. With our different backgrounds, we complement each other in the work we do. On a personal level, we have grown into a multicultural family.

We hope you enjoy our stories!