On the Current State of the Restaurant Industry
When I was in San Francisco in what feels like eons ago (in reality, it was less than a month ago), I had the pleasure of dining at Lord Stanley, which chefs/co-owners, Carrie and Rupert Blease, have operated flawlessly since opening in 2015. After dinner, I caught up with Rupert and asked him how he was faring with COVID-19 as it was starting to spread through the Bay Area.
“It’s been fairly busy every night,” he said. “It hasn’t affected us…yet.”
Yet.
That shitty, shitty, operative word that would be a huge blight of foreshadowing not only for just Lord Stanley, but for the rest of all restaurants and bars in the Bay Area and beyond.
From that moment on, I watched my industry, made up of a truly remarkable fabric of people, plummet right into the depths of hell.
Restaurateur giants and beloved mom-and-pop eateries alike closed their doors in a matter of days. Some restaurants never saw their grand opening come to fruition.
Thousands upon thousands were let go from their jobs. In New York City alone, some 250,000 employees in the hospitality industry were to file for unemployment—and all at the same time. The immediate ripple effect made the New York Department of Labor site crash, and a new system was put in place where the newly unemployed were given a specific time and date to sign up dependent upon his or her last name.
GoFundMe pages were created in an effort to raise money for staff.
Chefs got creative, turning their kitchens into commissaries and offering meals for delivery or takeout. (And this would certainly not be a profit, mind you.) Bottles of wine and prebatched cocktails, too, would be available.
At Tail Up Goat in Washington, D.C., co-owner Bill Jensen has been hosting a #stayhome Wine School series.
In Wilmington, North Carolina, Jud Watkins has turned his Wrightsville Beach Brewery into a drive-thru farmers’ market.
With the growing pandemic, more and more restaurants are now opting to forego the takeout route to protect both staff and the public, and are closing for the foreseeable future. The National Restaurant Association is predicting between five to seven million jobs lost in the hospitality industry due to COVID-19.
And this doesn’t just affect those individuals working in the restaurants—farmers, fishermen, florists, bakers, and suppliers of all kinds are suffering the wrath as well.
Floyd Cardoz, who paved the path of Indian-American fine dining, sadly passed away due to Coronavirus complications. (For those of you who would like to donate to his wife and family, please do so here.)
I truly cannot imagine what New York City—or Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Raleigh, or anywhere, even—would look like without the dining landscape it was not that long ago. Will restaurants survive this pandemic? And if so, which ones?
Simpler times in Chicagoland.
The hospitality industry has always been the first to open its doors to feed those in need. (Just look to José Andrés’s World Central Kitchen as a reference point.)
And even though Congress and the White House have finally figured out a stimulus plan, the hospitality industry still needs your help.
Here’s what you can do.
CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES
Eater’s Hillary Dixler Caravan even provides a script that you can use. You’re on Instagram all day, so I know you’ve got time—take five minutes and contact yours about a government bailout.
BUY GIFT CARDS
You may not be able to use them now, but that money will go directly into the pocket of the restaurant owner and could help pay the staff, rent, etc. Buy one for yourself, or for a friend who is getting married later in the year, or perhaps your best friend who just had a child (literally, three days ago) and could use a date night with her spouse in the future.
SUPPORT LOCAL
This holds true for both restaurants as well as the farmers who they lean on. The Greenmarkets in New York are coming together and doing a tremendous job in directing foot traffic and how people should both shop and pay—and with restaurants not able to take the bulk of the produce, you may as well stock up.
Is one of your favorite restaurants still open for delivery or takeout? Treat yo’self and order to-go. Even though restaurant workers have a lot of exposure to the public, employees follow a set of sanitary guidelines so as to not get customers sick. (That said, it’s your call whether or not you want to leave your Quarantine HQ.)
DONATE, DONATE, DONATE
Yap, those aforementioned GoFundMe pages? There’s a fuckton. Thankfully for you, Eater has compiled a mega list of both national and local donation pages for your perusal.
KEEP UP TO DATE WITH THE LATEST
Eater, Grub Street, and the New York Times have been doing a tremendous job reporting on how the restaurant industry is grappling with these times. Don’t know where to start? Check out Alex Stupak’s op-ed in Grub Street and Amanda Cohen’s op-ed in the New York Times. Then follow it up with yet another op-ed by Andrew Carmellini, Tom Colicchio, Danny Meyer, Missy Robbins, Marcus Samuelsson, and Adam Saper. These are just the tip of the iceberg. Keep reading.
SHARE LOVE VIA SOCIAL
I’m no influencer—nor do I have a huge following—but if you’ve seen my IG stories, they have been, by and large, reposts of restaurants across the U.S. who are either A.) open for takeout and delivery, or 2.) raising money to fund their staff. Spread the love. It won’t hurt.
I know a lot of us are short on cashflow, but if there was ever a time to give back, that time is now.