How Food Businesses Nationwide Are Handling Coronavirus

Then things turned on a dime, and we decided not to open a second day. It’s grim, but in the interest of safety for ourselves and our patrons, we couldn’t expose ourselves to that risk. (Ed. note: On Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom called for restaurants and bars to halt dine-in service.)

It’s great to see restaurant folks coming up with creative ways to give people access to food and beverages. That was our immediate business shift. Executive chef Brett Cooper put together a new menu based on comfort. What do people want to eat right now if they’re anxious and stuck at home? We shifted our program to delivery, with loaves of bread, sandwich kits, pizzas, mac and cheese. Really family-friendly stuff, shared meals at home. For now, people can support our staff by buying our coffees online, which has always been a core part of our business. We’ve seen an uptick in coffee sales even as we’ve eliminated dining in.

What a time to open a restaurant. How can we still be part of this community we’re so new to? We’re based in San Francisco, so our worry was that we didn’t have as deep a connection in LA. Going back to our opening on day one, just seeing the surge of support from our local neighborhood, it showed us what’s possible here.

“We had one of our best Sundays to date…guests shopping for wine, beer, and cheese, and picking up carry-out.”

Erin Carlman Weber, co-owner of All Together Now, Chicago: We love the calls for digital gift card purchases on social media (and every bit helps), but if customers can take us up on all the alternative ways of service like carry-out and delivery, it’ll give our staff opportunities to stay busy and on the schedule. New social distance initiatives include a “drive-through window” where guests can walk (drive, bike or roller skate) on up to our window and place an order for food, wine, cheese, olives, tinned fish, cultured butter, etc. The Wine & Cheese Hotline is up and running; we provide personalized recommendations if you call us at 773-661-1599. We’ve also implemented a “social distance gratuity”: all funds received will be distributed right away to the amazing cooks, servers, dishwashers, and others who keep the machine running and whose livelihoods hang in the balance. And, finally, we launched Family Dinner, featuring a new daily special available for pickup or delivery (full menu here). Despite everything going on, we had one of our best Sundays to date, with guests opting to shop for wine, beer, and cheese, as well as picking up carry-out.

Thursday, March 19th

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“We haven’t seen any elderly people for about a week. I guess they’re scared to come out of their houses.”

Ismail Ismail, Highland Food Mart, San Antonio, TX: I opened my store, Highland Food Mart, in 1989. Thirty years later, there is still no grocery around me. The H-E-B and Walmart are maybe 10 or 15 miles away, but not a lot of people here have cars.

I’m part of a city program, Healthy Corner Stores, that sells produce and healthy foods at lower prices to convenience stores like mine. There are a lot of older people here, they want something healthy to eat, and the distance between them and the big stores is too far. I keep the prices on my produce as low as possible. I might make 15 to 20 percent margins on a bag of chips, but on my produce I make maybe 1 or 2 percent. People do their weekly grocery shopping here, and that feels good to me.

With the news of the virus, people have been coming in a lot. I am selling a lot of produce. There is a lot of panic because the big stores are running out of stuff. They are so busy and they close early now. I stocked up last week, thankfully, and we haven’t had major shortages. Still, I am sold out of bathroom tissue, milk, eggs, and bread.

A lot of people are very nervous. They don’t want to go to crowded places. Even when they come to little stores like me, they come in and out fast. I noticed we haven’t seen any elderly people for about a week. I guess they’re scared to come out of their houses.

I have no idea if I am going to stay open. Because I sell fresh produce, people go out of their way to come visit my store. Most small stores don’t have that kind of selection. I mean, celery? No one has it because it goes bad so fast. We are taking it day by day.

I hope that things get better. I hope we don’t have to close. If the store does close, I don’t know what I’ll do.

“We’re starting to get angry, we’re starting to put our voices together, and we’re pushing for someone to help.”

Deborah VanTrece, Twisted Soul, Atlanta, GA: The past few days have been the true meaning of living hell. We were open this past weekend and I put every safety measure I could possibly think of into practice—sanitizer! wipes! Lysol spray!—but there were just too many things I couldn’t control. For example, we had a closed event on Thursday night for 40-something people, and there was one lady who, for whatever reason, just went around touching everything: nametags, glasses, all the things we’d so carefully sterilized. Like, why? Then I was shopping at Restaurant Depot, trying to keep my six feet of distance (because I’m in a high-risk group; I have asthma and have had pneumonia twice), and some guy I don’t know who recognized me from TV grabs me and hugs me. I was at a loss for words.

I worried most about my staff, watching them passing money around—what’s dirtier than money?—the credit cards, the clipboards, used flatware and glasses. You can try your hardest to control an environment, to keep everything safe and sterile, but at a certain point it feels like playing Russian roulette with people’s lives. We thought about moving to just takeout, but I felt like that decision was reactive rather than proactive. So yesterday, I decided to shut the doors.

It was a hard decision, but it was the decision that would sit on my heart better. Maybe we’ll pick this back up in a week or so, do to-go only, but I need some time to figure it out, to come up with a plan rather than reacting in a frenzy.

Right now, my goal is to see what I can do to push the government into helping the restaurant industry, because we need help. On TV, the president is saying, “Stay away from restaurants and bars.” But what about the people who work there? What do we do for them so they can stay away?

As an industry, we’re starting to get angry, we’re starting to put our voices together, and we’re pushing for someone to help. More than, “Oh, they can just do takeout.” We need some relief so people can free up their brains and think. We can’t put people’s lives on the line just so they can make a dollar. The choice shouldn’t be: go to work so I can eat and have a roof over my head but take the chance of getting very sick. It’s not supposed to be like that.

Tomorrow, I have four core team members coming in to figure out what’s next. We’re trying to get layoff letters for my employees so they can get unemployment. We’re putting packets together on who they can turn to and where they can get assistance. We’re cleaning out the walk-in and if employees need any of that food, they can have it. I’m not a grocery store but I’m a restaurant with a walk-in, and that walk-in was pretty full when we closed. We’ll donate the rest to organizations like Meals on Wheels, which is in need of a lot of assistance right now.

We also started selling gift cards through our website, which people can purchase to support us now and use when we reopen. I’ll tell you: We have no thoughts of not coming back. We will be back. But right now is the time to be still. To stay in. To figure out how to survive.

“We’d pack 40 people into the shop. It was like a house party.”

Michelle and Ken Mungcal, Now Serving, Los Angeles: We took a note from restaurants and other bookstores in not letting people congregate and linger in spaces, which is what people do in our shop. So we closed for browsing on Monday. It was really sad. Now we’re trying to add more stuff to our online store, figure out curbside pick-up, whatever else we can do to generate some income to keep us afloat. We’re a really small operation: just us and a couple part-time employees. We didn’t have a robust online store before. The events were our biggest financial driver.

That’s where the energy was—in these events, where an author would come to Now Serving to promote their new cookbook. We’d pack 40 people into the shop. It was like a house party. A lot of people who came to these events would tell us that they had been meaning to visit for a while and end up buying a knife or another book while they were here. These events were a great way to capture sales. From a revenue perspective, even if we sold just 12 books at an event, that would help us break even for one week.

Now, that’s the last place people want to be in. We had a calendar of events with authors and their new cookbooks and, one by one, everything that was planned is now gone. We feel so bad for these authors who were so excited for their first book. We’ve already bought some of the books for fall events that have been postponed. We’re going to see if we can move them online or take the hit. We’re in the middle of reaching out to our sales reps from book publishers. We’re asking if they’re going to extend billing cycles or give some kind of grace period for small independent book shops like us. There has to be some kind of mutual understanding.

Wednesday, March 18th

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“I would love to enjoy our success—everyone talking about the ‘bean moment’—but it’s not cool for me”

Steve Sando, Rancho Gordo, Napa, CA: The stress level is amazing. Saturday was our busiest day ever—we had 1,700 orders. Sunday it was 1400, and I thought surely people were just at home, getting used to this social distancing, and things would go back to normal on Monday. But it’s just been worse, not better. It’s going to be weeks before we’re able to fulfill these orders. Normally we can happily do about 600 orders a day, 700 if we push it. You can just do the math. If you have day after day of orders in the thousands, everything just gets pushed out further and further.

It’s a perfect storm. With the InstantPot, then people who want to go more vegetarian. And then we’re getting more press. Whole cookbooks about beans. Our customers are real evangelists, so they’re telling other people. And now, all of the sudden, people are filling their pantries. In uncertain times, you may not go buy a nice new car but you’d go and buy excellent beans. A home cook knows a full pantry means control. And everything feels so out of control.

We’ve had to bring on more workers and start a night shift, all while dealing with the reality of the workers and the virus. Our eighteen permanent, full-time people all have a very generous PTO and are well-paid, and we’re talking about childcare options now that schools are closed. But we’re having to take on nearly as many temps, and I found out that they get no sick days. We’re not really sure what we’re going to do.

In terms of supply, we’re lucky that we’re at the beginning of the season. We harvest in the fall, and, after Christmas, we mill the beans to make sure they’re clean. We don’t have a very robust inventory stock but we’re monitoring it to make sure we don’t oversell something. I worry about the trouble in June and July. I have no clear idea of what’s going to happen.

This isn’t joyous, this horrible crisis. I hate this stuff. I would really rather sales were normal. I would love to go back to begging people to buy beans and having them get excited when they try them. I would love to enjoy our success—everyone talking about the “bean moment”—but it’s not cool for me, and moments pass anyway. What scares me is the delivery chain. Could that break down next? What happens if half of the FedEx workforce is out sick? You’ve got to have plan B, but right now, plan B looks like crying. We’ll just have to say there’s nothing we can do.

“The local and national government is providing very little guidance, so we’ve taken it into our own hands.”

Ilma Lopez, Chaval and Piccolo, Portland, ME: The virus is affecting our entire business—not just the owners and employees but also the artists and musicians who create for us and the farmers we source our food from. The local and national government is providing very little guidance when thinking about what our next move should be, so we’ve taken it into our own hands. The Portland restaurant community has always been close, so we held a meeting last week on how we should proceed, and we have a big email chain going on with everyone from restaurant owners to bartenders to line cooks.

It’s helping to have this community unity. We’re hosting a Skype session this week to reconnect. We and all of the restaurants that still had food in their walk ins, from Mr. Tuna to Central Provisions to Little Giant, put together meals for Portland area children who are going hungry. In this uncertain time, having that network is really important, and when we all communicate and show that we’re on the same page, it will hopefully instruct the local and national government on how to proceed both politically and economically. Of course we have money saved for things like a broken stove, but this is not something anyone could plan for. So instead of spending time stressing out, we’re keeping open lines of communication with our staff and our city and focusing on everyone’s mental and physical health.

“We’re still going to open Talat Market in April, as long as the government will let us.”

Parnass Savang, Talat Market, Atlanta, GA: This restaurant opening has been delayed so many times. I’ve told people, “We’re going to open in the fall! We’re going to open in the winter!” This spring we were going to open for real. We were getting that momentum going. Then…this happened.

At first I didn’t think it was a big deal. Then I started hearing from my peers that they were closing up, and from my parents, who have a Thai restaurant in Lawrenceville called Danthai. That part was the hardest—hearing them say, “Nobody came to eat but there were a bunch of to-gos. Sales are declining so much but we have no choice.”

I’m afraid to drive back home and see them. My dad is 65 and has diabetes. But they’re immigrants. They’re going to keep going. That’s what they do. And that’s what I would do too—what I am doing.

We got loans, we got people to pay, we got investors—and they’re all waiting for us to execute this thing. So we’re still going to open Talat Market in April, as long as the government will let us. It will be to-go only. Luckily we don’t have a staff yet, so there’s nobody I need to worry about laying off. I’m concentrating on what I can control: Finishing the electrical, finishing the plumbing, developing core values and a theoretical restaurant culture—that’s where I’m putting all my stress energy right now.

Rod [Lassiter, Talat Market’s sous chef and co-owner] and I have been doing pop-ups for three years. Pop-ups are all about playing within the rules and doing the best you can. That was good training for us.

Maybe making really badass to-go food will be a fun challenge. It’s not about presentation anymore; it’s all about flavors and creating something that can hold up for 20 minutes in a car. So let’s do it. I’m ready.

Tuesday, March 17th

“Indigenous peoples and people of color have been put on the back burner since colonization, and this pandemic proves that.”

Brian Yazzie, Intertribal Foodways, St. Paul, MN: This aggressive virus has blanketed the world at a very fast rate in just a matter of weeks. It reminds me of how smallpox affected the indigenous peoples of the Americas, albeit with a much, much higher fatality rate. As indigenous peoples, we have learned from these historical pandemics, and traditional medicinal practices have been passed on generations to keep our communities safe as possible.

I run a small catering business and I’m a traveling chef. All of my catering and national projects have been cancelled for the months of March and April. I’m emotionally drained, thinking of our elders and those most vulnerable to this virus being exposed, and the systemic oppression it reveals at the state and federal levels. I know of countless indigenous people and people of color who have been denied tests that are being provided to caucasians and political officials. Indigenous peoples and people of color have been put on the back burner since colonization, and this pandemic just proves that.

I’m providing virtual cooking classes and presentations on indigenous foods to help bring in some income during this time. I also have a YouTube channel where I make recipes focused on indigenous ingredients of North America. My fiancée, who works for the Indian Child Welfare Act law firm here in the Twin Cities, is able to continue working from home, which helps in a major way.

Since this pandemic, I have seen grassroots organizations and tribal government entities start virtual support groups to help provide for our elders and those most vulnerable. Ensuring access to food, medicine, and water are especially important on reservations, where the nearest grocery store could be more than an hour away. As an indigenous chef, seed keeper, and forager, I always keep my dried pantry stocked, and, at times like this, that definitely comes in handy. Staying connected with our landscape and knowing where our food comes from is what the indigenous peoples of the Americas have always done.

“Just like that, there was nowhere to cater and no one to cater to.”

Christopher Freeman, Occasion Caterers, Washington, D.C.: The catering market here is like none other nationally. Dozens of D.C.-area caterers make tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue. The caterer I work for has annual sales of nearly $50 million and employs almost 800 culinary and service professionals. Caterers of our size rely on the continued, repeat business of corporations and large organizations who come to Washington, D.C. every year, spring and fall, to revel amid some of the largest and most dazzling event spaces in the country. On any given night, we will cater seated dinners for thousands of guests across five, six, seven museums, libraries, and Federal buildings, as well as more intimate gatherings in private homes.

Our event schedules usually begin to pick up now, in mid-March, and build steadily throughout April, May, and June to white-hot levels of happy delirium and exhaustion.

Nothing could prepare us for what happened this last week.

Last Monday, March 9, all of that business started to go away. Seated dinners for 850 vaporized; buffet dinners for 2,500 went up in smoke. By Tuesday, we were in free fall. Nearly all of our events through March and into early April had cancelled. On Wednesday, things got even worse: the D.C. government restricted the size of gatherings to 1,000 people, cutting larger caterers like us (not to mention professional sports franchises) off at the knees. By Friday, the Federal government had closed prized event spaces like the U.S. Capitol Building, congressional office buildings, and the Library of Congress to the public. The Smithsonian closed, too, and the D.C. government again reduced the maximum occupancy for gatherings, this time to 250 people. Just like that, there was nowhere to cater and no one to cater to.

On Friday, Occasion Caterers implemented rolling furloughs for all its salaried employees for at least two weeks, including me. No one in upper management was spared. We were left with little choice. With almost zero revenue projected in the coming weeks, we needed a fiscal tourniquet to stop the bleeding.

Caterers in Washington, D.C. will only survive if we can endure the many caprices of this pandemic—with our hard-won savings or through temporary, non-industry jobs—until our clients are able to book new events. When that day comes, we’ll return to our jobs with gratitude and joy. Here’s to hoping.

“Everyone will walk out with a meal.”

Meg Savage, Rethink Food NYC: Our organization takes food excess and surplus from restaurant kitchens and corporate kitchens and distributes it to organizations like soup kitchens and church kitchens around the city. All the restaurants in NYC have been forced to move to take-out and delivery only or else close their doors. We knew that many soup kitchens would have to close shop too—and also that a larger number of people would need meals. So, two days ago, we launched the Restaurant Response Program to tackle all three problems at once.

The plan is to select up to 30 New York restaurants and pay them a stipend up to $40,000 to stay open for eight to 10 weeks and act as a takeout and/or delivery distribution arm. In other words, we’re turning restaurants into community kitchens for anyone in need.

The first restaurant we’re taking over is Little Tong Noodle Shop in the East Village, which will be up and running on Wednesday. The menu will be based on what the staff can produce well and quickly, taking into account their culinary expertise. The restaurant will serve dan dan pork ragu with roasted veggies and Kung Pao chicken breasts with marinated cucumbers and steamed jasmine rice. We’re tapping into the food they still have in the restaurant that would normally be going to compost or trash, and as it runs out we’ll be working to refill their stock and create new menus.

We’ll be spacing everyone out in line for pick up. People can give the donation via electronic payment or a cash bin—there will be no exchange of hands. We’re still crunching numbers, but the max suggested donation would be $5. Somebody can give $20, which is great. Somebody can give nothing, and that’s fine as well. Everyone will walk out with a meal. The goal would be for each restaurant to serve at least 500 to 1,000 meals per day—30,000 meals a day in all. We’ll also be making thousands of meals a day at our headquarters at Brooklyn’s Navy Yard.

We are actively looking for more restaurants. We have applications on our website where they can apply. It’s only a $40,000 stipend, so we’re looking at the little guys: a restaurant with a monthly rent of $4,000 – $8,000 and four or five staff members in the kitchen. A lot of the larger restaurant and hospitality groups are putting in place plans and benefits for employees, whereas a lot of smaller restaurants are having to let people go, so we feel that we’ll be better serving the NYC restaurant community by targeting the small guys.

We’ll pick restaurants based on where we need a new location. We’re constantly updating a map to pinpoint areas with the most need, looking at soup kitchen and community center closures. We’ll list all the participating restaurants and their hours of operation on our website and promote it online and to our friends in the NYC culinary community. This is the time to play to our strengths—and our strength is feeding people.

Monday, March 16th

“I had to take out a loan this morning; restaurants just don’t have reserves to live off of.”

Brandon Jew, Mister Jiu’s, San Francisco: This past Friday and Saturday, we still had 125 reservations. People were still going out, and I was kind of hopeful. I even had an idea for this little grocery store that we’d open inside Mister Jiu’s. But after reading the news Sunday morning, everything changed for me. I realized it was my social responsibility to close the restaurant. I didn’t want our restaurant to be a place that spread the virus, and I wanted to protect our workers. Saturday night was our last service.

It took us two and a half years to open the restaurant, and it’s uncertain when we’ll reopen.

Some of our employees have been with us since the beginning, and I’m figuring out how to take care of them. We had to furlough all our hourly employees so they could access unemployment. After talking to other chefs, we felt like this was the best way for them to access that benefit. I’m still paying for everyone who has healthcare through us, and I’m still paying our salaried employees. I had to take out a loan this morning; restaurants just don’t have reserves to live off of.

We gave out all our perishables and groceries to employees, anything they could stock up on. Toilet paper, too—it’s a real thing now. We had a couple of cases of TP. It’s not Charmin’, but it’s pretty good. Now I’m on my way to Mourad. A bunch of chefs in San Francisco and the Bay Area are coming together to consolidate our voices so politicians know how they can help as well as figure out how to support each other and our communities. I’m still optimistic. We’re full of resilient and creative people in this industry. So when crises happen, I know something positive is going to come out of it.

“The directive for social distancing goes against everything the hospitality industry is about.”

Adam Eskin, Dig Food Group (Boston, Philadelphia, and NYC): It’s not even day-by-day anymore; we’re making decisions every hour. Are people still sitting down to eat? Should we switch to individually wrapped plasticware? Who from our HQ can work on location? It seems like a never-ending stream of questions more than answers.

Our leadership team meets every morning and [Chief Culinary Officer] Matt started today’s off with this reminder: “Every meal we serve is a way for us to keep paying our teams and feeding our communities.” But how do we balance this reality with our responsibility to keep our people and our guests safe?

We’ve always done food donations, but when all this started to get real, [Head of Supply & Sustainability] Taylor Lanzet came to me and wanted to start a program to donate more meals. With social distancing, access to food also changes, especially for the most vulnerable people. So, we decided on Thursday that for every meal someone buys online, we’re donating one to local nonprofits in Boston, NYC, and Philly.

But, even the way we’re donating meals had to change. We’re talking to organizations about what they need. Do they need ingredients? Do they need pre-made meals that people can carry out? Are they increasing the days they’re open? We’re trying to adjust all the time. On top of that, we’re looking into how we can support the school systems that are closing.

We’ve also started thinking about what happens on the other side of this, and how we can come together as an industry. We just published all our documentation on our website in case it’s helpful to anyone else: everything from our scenario planning to our employee policies to our sanitization log templates. It might save someone a few minutes or just much needed headspace so they can think about their own business. And we’re thinking about what happens to the smaller restaurant businesses that don’t have the infrastructure or capital to weather the storm, and how we can support them too.

We closed our dining rooms and are only offering food for takeout and delivery. It’s possible that we will take more drastic measures. It’s hard, and it’s heartbreaking. The directive for social distancing goes against everything the hospitality industry is about. Our businesses are these spaces that are filled with people and food and laughter and an ethos of taking care of each other. Properly balancing the needs of so many as the facts change daily is the most challenging part of this.

Our teams (and so many of our peers in this industry) just want to do the right thing, but it’s not always clear what that is.

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“I’ve never gone without a paycheck—never left a job without having another one lined up.”

Emily Woodworth, Bungalow by Middle Brow, Chicago: I’ve been a server at Bungalow since it opened over a year ago. Up until last week, I worked there four nights a week, took community college classes, and volunteered at the Field Museum of Natural History. On Friday, the museum decided to close, then my classes were canceled. At that point, half of my life was telling me to isolate and the other half—my restaurant job—was business as usual.

That night at the restaurant, we were all talking about our personal safety and feeling like we should shut down. But some of my co-workers live paycheck to paycheck, and the prospect of closing was a serious concern for them. Without this job, they can’t pay their bills and make rent. And that’s where Pete and Polly’s minds were too. [Ed note: Peter Ternes and Polly Nevins are the co-owners of Bungalow and its sibling taproom Middle Brow.] They didn’t want to put us at a health risk or a financial risk. It was an impossible choice.

On Sunday, they announced that Monday would be the last night of regular service at Bungalow and Middle Brow. [Ed note: On Sunday night, Illinois governor JB Pritzker ordered all bars and restaurants in the state to close for in-person dining for at least two weeks.] Instead they’re going to try out a bunch of ideas to keep people employed. One is a subscription service where customers can sign up for beer, bread, and pizza deliveries. Back-of-house staff will keep their jobs, and front-of-house staff will assemble the packages and deliver them to customers. But there isn’t enough work for everyone.

I’m 38 years old, and I’ve been in the service industry for most of my working career: restaurants, markets, coffee shops, bars. I’ve never gone without a paycheck—never left a job without having another one lined up. But I told Polly before they decided to close that I would give my shifts to people who needed them more. If that’s something that I can do to help the overall team, I’m more than willing to do it.

I have savings. I don’t have debt or loans. I have a health insurance plan through Bungalow that I pay for, but I should have enough to be okay for a month or two. I hope we’ll have something figured out after that. A plan. An end date. I’ve never felt or seen anything like this before.

Sunday, March 15th

“As two first-time business owners, we’re trying to stay positive.”

Sara Mardanbigi, Nixta Taqueria, Austin, TX: In Austin, it felt very distant at first. Then SXSW got cancelled. The city started shutting down schools. The University of Texas at Austin’s President sent an email to their students stating the campus would be shut down because his wife tested positive.

As two first-time business owners putting in 75+ hours/week to keep everything afloat, we’re trying to stay positive. We’ve kept our heads down and forged ahead. What else can we do? We can’t exude fear or stress because it impacts everything—our team, our guests, our own sanity. So we’re doing what good restaurants always do: have a clean-ass environment. We are washing our hands more frequently, wearing gloves more frequently, and making minor adjustments to our setups (no communal cutlery station). But we have to be nimble. We’re considering cutting labor, which we really don’t want to do as it directly impacts the livelihood of our team. We’re considering delivery platforms, but it’s very unappealing when a large percentage is taken by the platforms and there’s virtually no option for tips. We’re taking custom orders now, which we hadn’t done before.

Traffic has remained steady but noticeably lighter. We’re not selling out at 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. There’s an uptick in to-go orders. Guests are bringing in their own hand sanitizer; they’re not touching door knobs; they have their own napkins, forks, and knives. But what has remained the same is people’s enthusiasm. We don’t feel the fear when guests come in, which is refreshing. Sure, they’re talking about the virus, but it’s not all-consuming.

We don’t know what to expect, or how long this will last. We’re five months into our baby business and the question marks are as glaring as they’ve ever been.

Saturday, March 14th

“This is the biggest challenge we’re going to face in our lifetimes.”

Eric Ripert, Le Bernardin, NYC: Yesterday I made a very hard decision to close Le Bernardin. We’ll remain closed until April, then reassess. In the last two weeks, we saw decreases in restaurant attendance to the point that it became unsustainable—unbearable, even—for us to remain open. What hurt the most financially was the drop-off in private events. We have two rooms that we book for private lunches and dinners, and the money from those bookings subsidizes the restaurant downstairs. The margins of a luxurious restaurant like ours are extremely slim, and if that model falls apart, the business does too. Closing the restaurant was the only way to try to survive this crisis.

I’ve been talking to Daniel [Boulud] and Jean Georges [Vongerichten] and others these last few weeks. We talk about the economics, but mostly we talk about the fact that this is, more than anything, a moral issue. The other challenges are not important compared to the risk of people getting sick and contributing to the spread of the disease. Imagine if a client gets sick at my restaurant. Imagine that they bring it to their families, that they have elderly relatives, and someone dies. I would have that on my conscience for the rest of my life.

I think our staff understands. A lot of them were not happy having to come to work, not knowing whether another employee or a purveyor or a client was infected. We’re not paying wages while we’re closed, but we’re paying continuing to pay health insurance to eligible employees, and we’ll continue to do that for as long as we can. We’re not officially laying anyone off, but if employees can’t support themselves, they’ll need to file with the government for unemployment. The hope is that, by closing now, we can progressively hire back our employees when this crisis passes.

This is the biggest challenge we’re going to face in our lifetimes. A lot of people are going to get sick. Some people are going to die from this virus. Yes, 9/11 was dramatic and painful, but you could kind of guess the future. The entire country came to NYC’s rescue, and we were back to normal after a few months of recovery. Here, we really don’t know what’s going to happen. The situation could last for a long time and get worse.

I haven’t had much time to think about it yet, but we may try to help the restaurant community while we’re closed, if we can find a very safe way to do that. At this point, the financials are not relevant. It’s a matter of life and death.

Friday, March 13th

“There’s no more doubting that the circumstances are dire.”

Harris Mayer-Selinger, Creamline, NYC: The state issued a mandate prohibiting gatherings of more than 500 people. We’re not sure if that rule applies to a place like Chelsea Market. In the meantime, we’re trying to figure out what to do with our team. We applied for the city’s no-interest payroll loan. We’re waiting to hear back. One of our attorneys told us we could potentially put people on unpaid administrative leave, so they can apply for unemployment and come back to their job when business demand grows again. So we’re looking into that. I just heard that Grubhub might be waving their fees. I’ll believe it when I see it. That could put us all on life support. There’s no more doubting that the circumstances are dire.

“It’s hard to wonder, okay, can we hold out for that long?”

Adrienne Elliott, Kakao, Seattle: It definitely feels like things are getting a little more real. Right down the street from us, a restaurant called Serious Pie and their restaurant group is closing for the next 8-12 weeks. A lot of their employees come and get coffee here before or after their shift. I think today is their last day of business before they take the break, so we’re running chocolate over there to them and trying to buy pizza. There is a lot of uncertainty and sadness for our team too—we’re trying to do some mathematic acrobatics and lay out options so our employees are totally aware of how much they can expect their next paycheck to be.

We’re still seeing probably a 60-70% drop in business. People are still coming in to get to-go stuff, and there are a lot of healthcare professionals, researchers, and service workers still in the area. Is it going to pick up at all? Probably not. Are people going to get more stir crazy than they already are? Who knows.

We have decided to still stay open with our regular hours next week, but we’re going down to a skeleton crew: one person per shift. We’re scheduling with a 30 minute overlap, so staffers are able to check in with each other. We’ve told staff we’ll pay them for their full schedule as it was published originally for last week, this week, and most of next week, so they can at least rely on this pay period being somewhat similar, but of course tips are affected. We’ll reassess after that.

Amazon announced that they’re working on a $5 million grant system, and we’re definitely working on an application for that. There are certain parameters—how many employees you have, for example—and we definitely qualify with the amount of business we’ve lost. It’s scary because all of these things take time to apply for and get approved for, and from what I understand, it seems they won’t be able to give out any money until the end of the month…or even later. It’s hard to wonder, okay, can we hold out for that long? Are our people going to have to look for other work or go on unemployment before then? There is a lot of uncertainty.

“Our communities are our biggest—and only—safety nets.”

Anna Dunn, restaurant consultant, writer, and activist, NYC: I’ve worked at Diner in some capacity for 14 years, most recently as a manager and cookbook author. A couple days ago, as coronavirus panic started to increase and people began social distancing, it occurred to me that many people’s support systems were crashing, including in the restaurant industry. It’s not just about lost income from people staying home. So many restaurant workers are uninsured, so if they get sick, how will they pay for medical care? How will they get to the doctor if the subway shuts down? How will they get groceries if they’re stuck at home?

Kelly Sullivan, a bartender and server at our sister restaurant Marlow & Sons, and Seamus Branch, a server at Diner, reached out to me with similar concerns, so we all sat down yesterday to figure out what we could do to help. We decided to start collecting funds—before people started hoarding money—to pool resources for our community’s needs. And we’re putting together a group of volunteers who are ready to help in other ways.

We’re calling it the Service Workers Coalition. We’re saying to people: “Think about how much you’d spend on lunch on a normal day at the office, or how much you’d tip if you were eating dinner out, and donate that money to the Coalition, to help the people who would’ve been serving them.”

The flyer went out on Instagram last night, and we’ve raised $2,600 [Ed note: updated as of 10 a.m. on March 13th]. Volunteers have reached out offering to shop for people, pick up medications, give rides, and more. We’ve gotten emails from people in Massachusetts and Portland, OR and elsewhere outside NYC who want to launch similar programs in their cities. It’s mostly other service-industry workers offering their help, which is amazing to see, but I hope people in more privileged positions will get the message that we need their support too. They can email [email protected] or Venmo us directly.

I understand that the mandate right now is to stay home and stay isolated, but for a lot of us, that’s not possible. Almost nobody calls out of work in the restaurant industry. Our communities are our biggest—and only—safety nets. We may not have insurance or paid sick leave or stable incomes, but we have each other.

“The idea of losing my apartment again is terrifying.”

Tess Kaytmaz, hostess, NYC: I’m a hostess at a high-end Italian restaurant in Brooklyn. I typically work three 5-to-7- hour-long shifts a week and make sixteen dollars an hour. It’s one dollar more than NYC’s minimum wage, but I don’t have health insurance or paid sick leave, which is pretty typical in the restaurant world. It’s an industry without a safety net—which is scary in normal times but downright terrifying in moments like these.

I didn’t have a stable living situation for about a year. I was sleeping on couches, crashing on random beds in lofts, any place I could sleep for free. The idea of losing my apartment again is terrifying. If you don’t live paycheck to paycheck, there’s no way to understand what it’s like to not know if you’ll have work tomorrow.

Last week, shifts at the restaurant started to get cut. Reservations were cancelling and walk-ins slowed, so our manager would text us, calling in only one server or sending someone home early. I got called off this Wednesday. Yesterday, the entire restaurant closed for the night. I can’t blame them for shutting down when there’s no business. But losing even one shift a week makes a significant dent in my income.

I’ve been hostessing for so long, you could throw me into any random restaurant and I could run that floor. And despite my years of experience, I’m still considered a minimum-wage, unskilled worker. The reality is that people in the food service industry—the waiters, the stockists at grocery stores, the delivery people—are entirely necessary to the survival of this city. Our jobs put us at high risk, but we can’t stay home and miss a paycheck. We’re stuck with two bad choices, and that’s never been more apparent than right now. I just want a chance to make a living without losing everything that I’ve worked so hard for.

“A huge chunk of our customer base is either over 65 or immune-compromised.”

Devorah Sawyer, Berkshire Food Co-Op, Great Barrington, MA: We’ve been extremely busy with people panic-shopping. Like many co-ops, a huge chunk of our customer base is either over 65 or immune-compromised. They shop at our food co-op specifically because of the nature of the food we offer, whether it’s organic or whole foods or made for special diets. We have a wide array of items in the wellness department that they may not find anywhere else. Many of our customers need to worry about what’s in their food and where it comes from, and it puts their minds at ease when they shop here because they know, when they find something on our shelves, we’ve already vetted the product to make sure it’s the best quality they can get and the cleanest version. We do that thinking for them. There aren’t many options like us in our area. It’s the Berkshires, not a big city.

There are only a few cases of coronavirus over here but obviously that number is only growing. We’re not going to be closing the store because the community really relies on us. Our staff knows that there’s not going to be any penalty for sick time right now, but we all feel such a huge sense of responsibility for our customers that they don’t want to take sick days.

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“The tenor of the conversation has changed in the past 24 hours.”

Erin Carlman Weber, All Together Now, Chicago: Guests are talking more and more about coronavirus and we’ve seen a noticeable dropoff of guests in the space. Team members have also shared concerns about making rent and paying their bills. Fortunately, our staff is enthusiastically jumping in to help with everything from sanitation to creative marketing strategies to keep business up. The tenor of the conversation has changed in the past 24 hours.

In anticipation of folks staying home, we are actively amping up our efforts on delivery platforms and adding wine and other prepared meals to our offerings. Starting Monday, we’re also rolling out a wine and cheese hotline so guests can call for personalized wine and cheese recommendations (like we do in the shop), which will then be prepared for pickup. We are also testing prepared meals for guests to reheat at home and stock their freezers with.

From our vantage point, there is definitely heightened anxiety within the Chicago restaurant community. Our peers have voiced uncertainty about the real risks to our businesses and shared concern about how long the pandemic will last. Many offices are having employees work from home, and there are many cancellations of events and postponement of large events like the James Beard Awards Gala, which is unsettling. We feel grateful for our tight-knit hospitality community and everyone’s willingness to share resources and recommendations on strategies and protocols.

Thursday, March 12th

“I’m not a nurse, but I have a kitchen and a remarkable team, and we want to help.”

Mark Canlis, Canlis, Seattle: Eight days ago, we were having a team meeting when we got the official announcement from the government telling people that no one should gather in large groups. We’d gone into the meeting to plan how we’d ride out the storm. But then we asked the question: How do you feed a city? What does hospitality look like? How can we keep our staff working and safe? We came out of the meeting thinking that we have a city to feed. We realized that the game is not over; we just need new rules.

We’re a 70-year-old fine dining restaurant off the freeway with 110 employees, but we decided to channel our inner drive-thru. We have a huge parking lot, and I feel like that’s what this restaurant has always wanted to be. People love our burgers, we thought, so let’s just serve them up. And our chef makes a mean veggie melt. One of expediters chimed up and said she makes a great bagel, so we’re turning the shipping container by our gardens, where we bake most of our breads, into the bagel shed. We thought, our chefs take such pride and care in serving family meal to the rest of the staff—what if we packed that up with some wine and delivered it to people who are self-isolating or quarantined or afraid of eating out? We all have cars. We can run our own delivery. I think these ideas can create new jobs for our staff while keeping them safe, and redefine hospitality in an unsure time.

I wish you could witness the feelings before and after that meeting. We’ve now spent eight days planning to open three totally new concepts: Canlis Drive on Thru, The Bagel Shed, and Family Dinner delivery. I’m so proud of this team, and always have been. It feels like I’m letting the city see what they’re capable of. Up until recently, our dining room was doing 50 or 60 covers. On Monday, there’s a strong chance we’ll serve 1,000 people. In a news environment where the headlines are increasingly hard to hear, I’m excited to have something to do, that my staff has something to do. We want to feed this city. I’m not a nurse, but I have a kitchen and a remarkable team, and we want to help.

“How long can this go on before I really just have to shut the door?”

Deborah VanTrece, Twisted Soul, Atlanta, GA: So much is happening so fast. I have asthma so I’m in that high risk group. I’m coming to terms with that—limiting where I go, who I’m around, staying six feet away. My 27-year-old daughter, who is also the bar manager here, was in London for a liquor distributor event. I called her up last night in a complete panic, and luckily she’s on a flight home right now. But at the same time, I need to think about all the other people who work for me. I’m how they survive and that’s a hell of a responsibility.

On Tuesday night we sent out an email to our customers because we’re trying to calm people, to take things seriously and show what we’re doing to provide an environment that’s still safe to come and enjoy. But our reservations have been reduced by 60 percent. On Sundays we used to do 250 covers; now it’s 50. And every day I’m asking myself: How are we going to survive this? How long can this go on before I really just have to shut the door? We’re out here looking up our insurance policy, like, does it cover viruses? There’s not tons and tons of money just sitting around.

Emotionally, I’m like, “What the fuck? What the fuck?” To have gone through all I’ve gone through: trying to get a brick and mortar opened in the first place, being an African American woman in a man’s field, fighting my way through that to get into a position of respect and being able to mentor others, figuring out where the money’s gonna come from, struggling to survive the past few years, looking for good employees. Finally I’m up there at the top of my game. Who could’ve imagined a virus might be the thing to take small businesses like mine out of the game?

“I can’t remember the last time we’ve had to make cuts like this.”

Brandon Jew, Mister Jiu’s, San Francisco: Yesterday, when I was looking at reservations for the rest of this week, it looked like Mister Jiu’s was going to be full Friday and Saturday. That made me believe people were still willing to go out. But at the end of service last night, everyone was talking about the news of the NBA and travel closure from Europe. It seems like the bad news continues to mount. Today, I noticed our reservations have gone down. Now, we have to really keep an eye on labor costs. We usually are ready for service with a full staff, but because of fewer reservations at Mister Jiu’s and Moongate Lounge, we had to cut a few people’s shifts this week. Two servers, two bar backs, and two prep cooks were cut today. Everyone understands because it’s evident that this is affecting all hospitality businesses. I can’t remember the last time we’ve had to make cuts like this.

“The public doesn’t know how hard we have to fight just to stay open even on a regular day”

Harris Mayer-Selinger, Creamline, NYC: We had a very good Saturday and things were looking good. We closed early on Sunday because of a charity dinner, so it’s hard to know what that day would have been like. Monday was OK, and then Wednesday totally tanked—I think we’re down about 25 percent. And we lost a $6,000 catering order that’s been in the works for six weeks—it was for a conference this weekend that got canceled.

We’re in Chelsea Market, so a lot of our customers are tourists. We anticipate that tourism is going to be restricted. [Ed note: President Trump announced travel restrictions from Europe later that night]. And even among New Yorkers, Chelsea Market is a place where people congregate in large numbers. Another big source of customers are the Google offices. If Google pulls the trigger on telling people to work remotely, we’re going to lose another revenue stream. [Ed note: Google employees in NYC have now been asked to work from home.]

With labor costs, it’s really tough. All of a sudden you have to cut hours. You don’t want people to lose their livelihood, but you also can’t sacrifice the whole business. We’ve been having conversations with our staff for the last four or five days—we’re trying to be thoughtful about this. We have people for whom this is a part-time job that supplements another full-time job. There are other people for whom this is everything.

We just learned that NYC is offering grants to help people carry payroll. That’s great, but it reminds me that the public doesn’t know how hard we have to fight just to stay open even on a regular day. One to two weeks of slow sales could mean a restaurant can’t cover payroll. Just like people live paycheck to paycheck, a lot of businesses do too.

Wednesday, March 11th

“The first case for Amazon was 50 feet away from our space”

Jessie Comfort and Adrienne Elliott (with input from Jeanette Harney and James B. Notkin), Kakao, Seattle, WA: We’re at the epicenter of what’s happening in Seattle. Seventy-five percent of our regular customers were from Amazon. The Google building opened a block and a half away from us just a few weeks ago. We were having record days, and after last Tuesday it went away. The first case for Amazon was 50 feet away from our space—we’re separated by an alley from the building—so immediately once it was confirmed last Tuesday evening it was pretty night and day. Business has been down about 70 percent.

We’re still staffing our people normally and reassessing to see what that might look like for the next few weeks if this continues. One of our founding principles and missions was to be for the neighborhood, and that’s the backbone of why we chose to stay open and operate as normal for our end. We want to be a central location for people who still have to go to work or live in the neighborhood, and we’re doing all the preventative stuff to stay safe.

Right now, our customers are people who can’t work from home, people from out of town. In the afternoon, we get some people who are getting cabin fever and want to have some connection with the larger population. We’ve seen a lot of service industry folks that are still going to work in this area. They know they can get good coffee here and have camaraderie with other people—we say we’ll go to your spot for lunch if you come over here for coffee. We joke we’ll just pass our money back and forth.

We’re attached to a multipurpose events space, so we’re trying to think creatively as we reduce our schedule. We were scheduled to be booked every day this month, and all of the events have been cancelled or postponed. We’re still going to pay staff for that time, and that’s a lot of revenue loss. Amazon told their employees to work from home for at least a month. If it begins to ramp up like it has elsewhere, we could be shut down.

On one hand, there’s a sense in San Francisco that precaution is a good practice. On the other hand, there’s a feeling that it’s an overreaction. It doesn’t help that our president has under-reacted to the virus, so some of the overreaction happens by making a political statement without understanding how it’s affecting small businesses.

“We’re trying to get back onto Caviar for delivery”

Brandon Jew, Mister Jiu’s, San Francisco: As far as our businesses, three events we were planning to host at Moongate Lounge [above Mister Jiu’s] this week got rescheduled to another week. Reservations and walk-ins have been down there. It’s more of a casual place for bites and drinks, and I think people are just not meeting and planning for that as much as dinner (Mister Jiu’s has been less affected). Downtown Chinatown generally has had a lot less foot traffic in the past week. So, at Mamahuhu, we’re trying to get back onto Caviar for delivery since less people are dining in. We are also going to offer take-out as an option on Caviar to see if we can operationally handle it. If things go well, we will try a couple days/times for delivery next week.

“We’ve slowed on hiring any new employees”

Deborah VanTrece, Twisted Soul, Atlanta, GA: Here’s the tea! As a small business owner, I am paying very close attention to the situation. We are seeing large corporate groups canceling reservations due to the company restricting large group gatherings. Our catering side is experiencing even more cancellations. There’s an increasing amount of guests requesting sealed disposable utensils or hot water to double clean utensils. Our sales are definitely lower.

For our part we are trying to be proactive and do all we can to show guests we are adhering to all sanitary practices. We have Clorox wipes, sprays, gloves and hand sanitizer visible throughout the restaurant. The hostess periodically wipes down the door handles and frame of the entrance door. The servers thoroughly wipe down tables and chairs between seatings. We constantly empty the trash in the bathrooms and wipe down all surfaces. In the bathrooms, along with soap, we have Lysol spray, Clorox wipes, hand soap and sanitizer for the guests to use.

We have slowed on hiring any new employees for fear of what the future may hold for the restaurant industry. We do not offer delivery at this time, but are considering it for the future in hopes that people who don’t want to go out for fear of exposure, may consider ordering through a delivery service.

“Doing what we can to take care of our employees and our community”

Erin Carlman Weber, All Together Now, Chicago: Here at All Together Now, we’re trying to exercise an abundance of caution without going into full-blown panic mode. For one, we’re paying sick leave for all of our employees, so staff doesn’t have to choose between paying rent or being sick and potentially passing that on. We’ve always been super diligent with following the health code and washing hands, but are also cognizant of sanitizing high-touch surfaces, like countertops, door knobs, our POS system.

In Chicago, we’re talking about the news, but no one is expressing concern and panic. All Together Now is a neighborhood spot and specialty shop, so we don’t have to rely on tourism—we’ve established a rapport with our regular customers, and haven’t experienced a downturn yet. We are planning to expand our delivery and takeout program to include packaged cheese boards and natural wines, along with sandwiches should it ever get to that point. The weather was recently gorgeous, so it was quite busy; people were talking about COVID-19, but for now, it’s still light and joking. Today, I did see some people come in for a meeting, but instead of shaking hands, they just bumped elbows. There’s that.

For now, all of our supply chains are flowing freely—we’re not experiencing a shortage of stock for the shop or the kitchen. We’ve been in touch with our POS vendor, though, who has assured us that things are fine if their employees work remotely. The news is top of mind for me, but we’re staying proactive. It’s the best thing I can do for our community. I can’t control how the city or government responds to the illness, but controlling what I can in my little All Together Now domain gives me a sense of calm. I know we’re doing what we can to take care of our employees and our community.

Current restaurant diarists include:

Brandon Jew, chef and owner of Mister Jiu’s, Moongate Lounge, and Mamahuhu in San Francisco
Jessie Comfort and Adrienne Elliott, managers at Kakao in Seattle, WA
Deborah VanTrece, owner of Twisted Soul in Atlanta, GA
Erin Carlman Weber, co-owner at All Together Now, a cafe and market in Chicago
Harris Mayer-Selinger, managing partner at Creamline, a fast-casual restaurant in NYC
Mark Canlis, co-owner of Canlis, a fine-dining restaurant in Seattle, WA Anna Dunn, restaurant consultant, writer, and activist in NYC
Tess Kaytmaz, restaurant host in NYC
Devorah Sawyer, director of marketing at the Berkshire Food Co-op in Great Barrington, MA Eric Ripert, chef at Le Bernadin in NYC Sara Mardanbigi, co-owner of Nixta Taqueria in Austin, TX Emily Woodworth, server at Bungalow by Middle Brow, Chicago Adam Eskin, founder of Dig Food Group, a fast-casual chain with locations in Boston, Philadelphia, and NYC Meg Savage, executive director at Rethink Food NYC Christopher Freeman, director of hospitality at Occasion Caterers in Washington, D.C. Brian Yazzie, caterer, traveling chef, and member of the I-Collective, St. Paul, MN Parnass Savang, co-owner of soon-to-open Talat Market in Atlanta, GA Steve Sando, owner of Rancho Gordo in Napa, CA Ilma Lopez, owner of Chaval and Piccolo in Portland, ME Ismail Ismail, owner of Highland Food Mart in San Antonio, TX Michelle and Ken Mungcal, co-owners of Now Serving, a cookbook shop in Los Angeles Lulu Meyer, director of operations at Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA), San Francisco Jerad Morrison, co-founder of Sightglass, a coffee shop with location in Los Angeles and San Francisco

Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit