The pandemic has hit restaurants hard, but experts say the ‘ghost food hall’ concept might save them

In the early days of the novel coronavirus pandemic, D.C. restaurateur Aaron Gordon couldn’t sleep.

The world was shutting down around him, and he had closed his restaurants’ dining rooms in response to social distancing mandates. He worried about how he would put food on his family’s table when the business model he used to feed other people had transformed radically, nearly overnight.