Article content Calgarians have had about a decade to get familiar with the concept of a restaurant pop-up: it’s been nearly 10 years since the team from Charcut ran their wildly successful Charpop events and popular, now-permanent restaurants like Native Tongues and Pizza Face started as pop-ups. The concept has lingered over the years, but pandemic times have caused a clear uptick in new pop-up businesses. At its most basic, a restaurant pop-up is any temporary food business. Traditionally, they’ve “popped up” in oddball spaces like warehouses or private homes for anywhere from a single night to a couple of weeks, but the concept has grown to include businesses that run regularly out of a sublet space, usually another restaurant with limited hours of operation. In the era of COVID-19, pop-up culture has grown to include takeout and to-go products.