Pop-up restaurants – temporary eateries that set up shop for a few days, weeks or months in spaces such as hotel lobbies or other restaurants that close for the night – are morphing into a multipurpose tool, used by different strata of the restaurant industry to test concepts, market new brands, engage with a younger audience, or prove to landlords, lenders and investors that they are worth the risk.
Since first appearing in London in the mid-2000s, when a handful of restaurateurs began staging culinary “happenings,” pop-ups have become so integral to the high-end restaurant scene that there are now pop-up production companies that help chefs and companies stage events and restaurant spaces that serve as homes to a continually shifting schedule of pop-ups.