Last week, when Governor Gavin Newsom discussed the possibility of restaurants reopening, he gave California restaurateurs a grim glimpse of the soon-to-come new normal: servers in masks and gloves, thermometer-wielding maitre’ds and half-capacity dining rooms to maintain social distancing.
Many restaurants that have remained open for takeout during these past five weeks are barely hanging on, relying on creative pivots, like meal kits, grocery sales and delivery, to stay afloat — along with the promise of emergency lending funds they may never have access to. Many worry that the potential new restrictions could put even more stress on an industry that even pre-crisis was suffering from paper-thin profit margins. And what if people are too scared to dine out?
Vallejo’s Heena Patel hopes they’re not. She has done everything to keep the lights on at Besharam, her restaurant in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood. After being forced to lay off 22 of her 30 employees, Patel started a GoFundMe in their name and began providing free food to their families. She pivoted to take-out, offering meal kits of her modern Indian cuisine and half-off wine bottles.
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She also applied for a piece of the Small Business Administration’s $350 billion Paycheck Protection Program, which ran out of funds last week before thousands of small restaurants like hers were able to access it. On Tuesday, the Senate passed another $310 billion to replenish the PPE funds, as well as an additional $60 billion in disaster relief.
Now Patel is wondering what her post-pandemic dining room will look like. She completely supports safety measures. It’s the half-capacity seating that Newsom proposed that scares her.
“I’m in survival mode and trying to be strong,” she says. “But how am I able to keep my staff when my revenue is half? As much as I want to sound optimistic, how much can an independent restaurant stretch?”
While some restaurants are staying afloat by refinancing loans and negotiating leases, others are learning that the temporary pivots they’ve taken in the face of the pandemic — delivery, selling groceries — may become permanent fixtures.
But that reduced seating? It simply won’t work, says Laurie Thomas, acting director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, which represents 800 restaurants in San Francisco and beyond.
“Honestly, I don’t know anybody that can operate at less than 75 percent and not bleed cash,” says Thomas, who owns two San Francisco restaurants and has been advocating for the industry on the city, county and state level for weeks. “People are already out of money. If we’re asking them to have capacity constraints, then we have to subsidize them with grants. The government has to bail out the hospitality industry like it bailed out the airline industry.”
Under the half-capacity ordinance, Nite Yun’s famed Cambodian restaurant, Nyum Bai, would shrink to an unsustainable 12 or 13 seats inside. That’s why the James Beard Award semifinalist closed her Oakland restaurant last week to reflect and devise a plan. Here it is: By summer, Yun will transform the patio of her brick-and-mortar into a fast-casual eatery, with a walk-up window, grab-and-go eats and the same Cambodian pop-music vibe that put her on the map.
“The menu is going to have less family-style food and more Cambodian street snacks, noodle dishes and rice plates,” she says. “The world has changed so much so quickly, and this is a secondary concept that I’ve always had in mind.”
For now, Palo Alto’s Rob Fisher has no secondary concepts, just a deep desire to re-open his four fine-dining restaurants, including Menlo Park’s British Bankers Club, and a willingness to do what the governor says. He’s already ordered forehead thermometers.
“It’s going to be a little odd to have servers in masks and gloves, but the general population will appreciate it,” he says.
His mind is also reeling with questions. Will he be allowed to keep booths, if he puts glass partitions between them? Will he need to pay for storage of his discarded tables? Fisher, whose Palo Alto Creamery Fountain & Grill remains open for takeout, says the hardest part for restaurants with 100+ seats like his will be the restrictions on large parties. He’s already imagining dividing a group of 30 into three tables of 10.
“There will be obstacles for sure, but we’ll get through it,” he says. “I’m not sure how, but we will.”
Fisher hopes he can begin to hire back some of the 215 people he was forced to lay off. Re-opening a restaurant after shutting down point-of-sale systems, refrigeration and other PG&E-recommended cost-saving measures is like opening a new restaurant.
“It’s a ton of work,” Fisher says. “With rising expenses, running restaurants was already tough before this happened. We are lucky to have landlords that are willing to work with us. It takes everybody to get through this. It really comes down to kindness.”
Nathan Casper is also thinking about large groups. Casper is the operations director for Araujo’s Mexican Grill, which has two locations in San Jose. Both are near churches, and on Sundays families arrive after services in groups of 15 or 20 to enjoy a slow weekend meal. Casper is considering serving them outside.
“Right now, we have zero capacity, so we’re going to do whatever is asked of us,” says Casper, whose staff already wears masks and gloves. “Our customers are tough, blue-collar people. If we take their temperatures they’ll probably laugh, but they’ll do it to get their burrito.”
What will save — and grow — Araujo’s is delivery. Pre-crisis, experts predicted that in three to five years, delivery would account for 15 to 20 percent of all restaurant business. But the pandemic has fast-tracked that trend. Araujo’s began using DoorDash in December and grew business by 15 percent in four months — and it hasn’t lost ground.
“DoorDash has replaced our walk-in business,” Casper says. “Over 60 percent of our revenue is coming from that single channel.”
But the delivery model doesn’t work for everyone, especially when DoorDash commission fees return to normal. To keep her restaurant open, Besharam’s Patel may have to adapt in other ways. But she’s used to that. Patel got her culinary start at age 50, after becoming a U.S. citizen. She catered while operating the liquor store she owned with her husband, Paresh. She joined La Cocina, the incubator kitchen, to make her restaurant dream a reality.
“Last year, I finally felt like I was putting a stamp on myself of chef over caterer,” Patel says. “Now I may have to do catering again. Otherwise, I don’t know how I’m going to pay my bills. Whatever happens, I haven’t given up on this path. I’m here for my neighborhood. Whenever they need food, I will give it to them.”
