I own A Restaurant… and I’m not sure what that even means now.
“You have the cutest little teardrop of chocolate ganache on your cheek,” my husband says as he leans down and kisses it off my face. I look up from under the brim of my hat, away from my spreadsheet of 124 unemployed restaurant industry people we were feeding that Saturday night. I was sitting in what had just recently been a highly-coveted green booth in our tiny, quirky restaurant that seats about 55.
We are about to celebrate 20 years of marriage, and for 19 of them, we have owned small restaurants and hospitality spaces of some kind or another. A month ago, I’d have told you that I hadn’t baked since 2014, when we sold our from-scratch bakery to our staff. But I’m baking a lot these days…
We signed a lease on this place three years ago. We share a building with a cute, retro-looking laundromat in a small college town. My husband and I have always opened places that we wanted to eat or drink in. And by the grace of our circumstances, the communities we’ve lived in have wanted them, too.
We also run a historic classic and craft cocktail bar that originally opened in 1950. It is dark and empty and haunted by the memories we’ve provided over the last 7 years. For people who love their spaces as we do, the financial devastation is as great as the sadness of the empty stools. It’s as eerie as watching your favorite late night talk show with no audience. Except we made this… we own this.
The imported rug that usually sits in the middle of our dining room is rolled up in the corner. Our plants and salt and pepper shakers are stacked on trays on top of the walk in. Our tables are loaded down with cases of to go boxes. Our coat hooks by the door now function as hooks that we hang our reusable masks from. I’m pretty sure some of the succulents aren’t going to make it… like a lot of us.
The framed feature articles from Arkansas food magazines stare down from the walls as I put together 124 brandy chocolate mousse cups with fresh berries. The week that we closed –just before we were required to– on March 14, we started feeding our 24 staff members with the food that would eventually expire. Our dining room was almost immediately converted into ground zero: where we were able to supply toilet paper, unemployment applications, tampons, and fresh produce to our people. It was grim… and overwhelmingly scary to see industry workers and regular supporters of our places both in such sudden dire need.
Restaurant work wires you to immediately hone in and fix peoples’ experience. After 30 years in this industry, it isn’t just second nature– it’s my first. I’m unfazed at plunging a toilet in the middle of a Saturday rush, and I have an uncanny knack for remembering which reservation on the books needs a birthday candle to complete their evening of small plates, courses, and cocktails. Those closest to me scold me for doing that stuff at parties and family gatherings now, because I just don’t know how not to anymore.
I found myself late-night scrolling through social media looking for restaurant people who needed help. There were desperate cries from so many people in our community asking how to navigate the antiquated unemployment website that was wholly unprepared for a sudden rush of applicants. I could see pressure mounting as our friends and colleagues are already weeks behind on rent, and falling into the darkest hole of debt. I needed to do something.
We are some of the lucky ones.
We are some of the lucky ones. Our CPA wore a cape while she slept under her desk for a week after the SBA PPP was passed and had our ducks in a row and ready to be submitted the day it was open for applications. Some of our friends didn’t have the time, couldn’t pull it together in time, or just didn’t have the help to. We have no idea how to hire back 70% of our people while we don’t operate. The equations in their forgiveness requirements still don’t make any sense to us. But we are thankful for a forgivable loan that a lot of people didn’t get, and don’t get a shot at.
The fierce stubbornness and support from our town has made me weep almost daily over the past month.
There are so many helpers. A friend in social work delivered stapled spreadsheets of food pantry resources. A Facebook friend who I barely knew a month ago reached out from her work at the Unemployment office. She has been my best email buddy, helping industry people desperate to file for Unemployment as they encountered glitches in the online filing system. Musician friends have streamed digital shows, donating the proceeds to us because they trust us to know where it should go. Some kind strangers (who I haven’t been able to hug yet) participated in an eating contest that garnered thousands of dollars in tips, and they tracked me down me through Instagram and told me that that money was for us… and they thanked us for knowing what to do.
Even though I have just as many days that I want to have a margarita for breakfast and stay in a dark room in my bathrobe, I look like someone who knows what to do.
In all the world of virtual that we live in, I have literally found angels on the internet. Or, perhaps it’s more accurate to say that they have found us.
We know a lot of people. And many of our friends and supporters still have jobs. My friends who are still employed started donating. My Uncle Harry sent a check from Denver. With the volunteer help of a woman who we have employed as our web and design guru for years, our website was converted into an online place to donate and reserve a meal. And the kind hearted people in Fayetteville started buying meals for hospitality people who have served them a countless number of dinners and drinks.
Local breweries have reached out and helped to include a can of beer with a meal. Our food distributor, local cheese shop owners, area farmers, and other restaurant owners have sent us 30 pound bins of whole grain rice or ground pork sausage or an award winning bleu cheese, all of which we dole out to home kitchens that look sparser than they did four weeks ago. A farmer friend called to donate an entire steer. Their hearts broke with ours at they watched doors to every restaurant close.
My husband and I, who rarely work a full service in our normal lives, due to the decades of restaurant abuse to our knees and backs, find ourselves here four days a week: in the honorable position of creating an experience of a multi course, balanced dinner– including a dessert, for people who work in the world of food. We have become a community hub, for a sense of restaurant normalcy, and therapy.
People line up in their cars and wait for us to double check their dietary needs, or put together a box of groceries. We deliver their dinners in gloves and masks, and we thank them for letting us help. We thank them for the thankless work they do. We ask if their unemployment has come through. If they have have enough food in their kitchen. This is normal small chat now. They honk at their friends and coworkers from their front seats, and sometimes they cry. Sometimes, I cry. Sometimes, it’s the only place they’ve left their house to in a week. Other times, they have two car seats of toddlers and a happy dog who is leaning out a back window wagging his tail.
We see folks from an Arby’s I’ve never been to, and familiar faces from my favorite hot fine-dining date night spot. Sometimes I slip in a bottle of our back stock Oregon Pinot for someone who has been super kind to me as a customer at their jobs– because god knows, we all need it every once and while.
After making sure our staffs were set up on unemployment, and making sure their lights were on and the $600 a week of stimulus money was flowing, we felt safer. We knew we’d done everything we could to be good leaders. We felt that we were doing everything in our power to ensure that they could, at some point, return to us in good mental and physical health. We can’t do what we do without our teams… they’re family to us. And it takes all of us– every night, to do what we do.
I encourage any of you who are worried about your people… whether it’s because they’re immunocompromised or because their jobs have collapsed– to follow our lead and schedule weekly virtual happy hours. Check on them and talk through what’s happening. So they know they’re not alone. We needed to know that from them, too.
We’ve walked 200+ people in our world through the unemployment process, and all the while, I’m wondering where their leaders are. Who is checking on those people besides us? Everyone should be. Everyone– You. You should be checking on them.
We’ve watched our industry closely. Well-meaning friends and family members send me every article about the COVID Hospitality situation. The headlines that read “80% of bars and restaurants won’t survive” and “why the restaurant industry is fucked” by the PPP bill usually sends me into a hot bath so I can hide my fears from my household while I pour a glass of wine and breathe into a paper bag.
We are in a state that hasn’t even called a Shelter-in-place yet. We live in the heartland of our country, and the national newspapers say that COVID-19 is just beginning to creep toward us, and we won’t peak until May. And our governor is calling to “reopen our great state” by May 4. Sometimes, I feel like I can make some real change in this world, others all I can see is the big Nothing, moving in the sky toward us.
My nightmare– the one that wakes me up sweating each night– is that I may be sick and unknowingly infecting the most vulnerable people we know, by trying to do a good deed. We haven’t been anywhere in a month except our businesses or our home. We do not see our friends. We don’t allow delivery people into our building. I use gloves at every gas station and ATM I touch. We sanitize every item coming into our space before it touches a surface. We’ve prepared and delivered so many meals in masks and vinyl gloves that I have a ring of acne where my masks sits on my face and my cuticles are like tiny thorns at the edges of my fingernails.
I can’t tell if I’m more afraid for the restaurants who have sold thousands of dollars of gift cards that will be redeemed upon reopening (when they need an actual cash flow) or for those who haven’t…
There are a billion unknowns in our occupation that make me afraid. Will we be expected to operate at 1/2 or 1/4 capacity when we reopen? How do we make the math on that work when we’ve accrued debt based on sales numbers that might never exist again for us?
Every service that we open our doors to is a stage set to mask the minor flaws in our kitchen, or the fact that we were short staffed that night. We roll back our shoulders and put smiles on our faces, poised and postured as we ask if we can get anything else for you while whisking away plates of crumbs and last bites.
We work hard to make magic, and make it look effortless. Each night, we set a theatre of experience for our guests.
We are friends with the produce guys we text at 11pm for a last minute door drop of something we left off the check list. We know the wives, kids, and parents of the musicians who play in our bar.
Our industry is not just the people you see and love who bring you your food. It trickles up to our farmers and vendors and brewers and bands…. all the way to our local banks.
The garnish stations in our kitchen now house hotel pans that feed volumes of people. The Bain Marie pans with ladles in them that held rich, butter mounted sauces are empty until further notice. Chefs who are normally impressive conductors of a talented choir of line cooks and sous chefs are hunched over packaging family meals for four, which they then deliver to their curb. Or even worse, are open for curbside service to an empty downtown, without a customer in sight. They’re trying to adapt to an entirely new concept– one that doesn’t care what setting the lights are on, or what music accompanies your meal. None of those details matter now… And they were my favorite part.
The experience of COVID-19 comes with no manual. There is no precedent set or script written for us to follow.
We sway and flex with every situation in our industry. We adjust the music for the crowd at hand. We are trained to change the experience from minute to minute depending on the volume of the tables we serve. I’ve watched some of our most respected community restaurants shift into grocery store delivery for the farmers that used to provide food for their menus, curbside taco packs complete with a box of vinyl gloves for sale, or scoop-and-serve family meals, just trying not to fall further behind. But every single restaurant and bar is different, and nothing applies to everyone.
We do not know what our future holds. We are not entry-level restaurant people... we aren’t working for a little extra income while we get through Grad School. This is our Career. This is our life. We love our places like they are our children.
The uncertainty in this industry– in our lives– is swirling around what it will look like to reopen… and when. To keep our people– both employees and guests– safe is our top priority. How do you socially distance in a 1600 sq. ft. restaurant? How long will it be before I don’t flinch when a person touches a stranger in a movie? And how does that translate to a small gathering place like a bar or restaurant? A place that was intentionally created to be intimate?
I just finished up 124 kraft boxes of Ahi Tuna Mac and Cheese with a Panko crumb top and a side of falernum glazed carrots, and a chocolate mousse cup and a can of Birch Ave Blonde Ale. I’m sold out of “reservations” for next Wednesday.
