New York restaurants struggling for normalcy
Despite economic rebound from pandemic, businesses face host of disruptions
At Sylvia’s Restaurant, a 59-year-old Harlem mainstay that rode out the shocks and shutdowns of the pandemic’s first year, New York City’s return to full-capacity indoor dining this spring and summer has simply brought a new set of challenges.
Workers have been so hard to find, even after the restaurant raised wages, that the owners had to call in relatives from across the country to help. Indoor seating remains limited because they cannot serve all the tables. Breakfast has been put on pause. As food prices soar, customer favorites like the smothered beef short ribs have been taken off the menu. New Yorkers began the summer with expectations of a grand reopening — tourists flocking to visit, curfews lifted, and dining and nightlife regaining their former effervescence. But many restaurants are still dealing with fallout from the COVID shutdowns while scrambling to satisfy a public determined to enjoy a summer of normalcy.
“Everyone was like, ‘OK, restaurants, go ahead; you can open up again,’” said Tren’ness Woods-Black, an executive of Sylvia’s and a granddaughter of the founder, Sylvia Woods. “But it’s not as easy as flipping on a light switch.”
Although clearly recovering from the blows of the past year and a half, New York’s dining business faces a host of disruptions. Many of the parttime artists and actors who worked the city’s restaurants left town as cultural venues closed. Staff shortages have exhausted the remaining employees and curtailed service. Gaps in food supplies have resulted in strippeddown menus. And a crush of eager, sometimes impatient, diners is adding to the strain.
Responding to a surge in delta variant cases, the city announced Tuesday that it would require all restaurant employees and indoor-dining customers to show proof of vaccination, starting Aug. 16. Woods-Black, who appeared at the announcement, said she supported the policy because she did not want to put anyone in danger, and Sylvia’s “can’t afford to get shut down again.” She said its revenues are half of what they were before COVID.
Andrew Ding, owner of the Handpulled Noodle and three other restaurants in Manhattan, said he would gladly comply with the new vaccination protocols but expects some resistance from diners and difficulty recruiting employees, if he needs to hire.
“It is definitely more to place on my staff,” he said.
But the biggest concern for restaurateurs is that the delta variant’s advance in coming months could imperil the rebound in revenue they had hoped for.
There are ample signs that a resurgence has begun. Tables are packed at restaurants and bars across the city. Many places have expanded their capacity with new outdoor seating, thanks to the city’s Open Streets and Open Restaurant programs.
“It feels like every day is a weekend,” said Simone Tong, the chef of Silver Apricot, in the West Village. “The energy is back.”
With commercial retail rents in New York City at record lows, some restaurants are signing new leases. There have been 1,713 new restaurant permit applications from Jan. 1 through July 2, according to figures from the city health department (which also include renewals for existing restaurants).
Still, in 2019, the number of applications for roughly that same period was 2,388, and many owners say they are a long way from the old normal.
“People think that because restaurants are allowed to be at 100 percent and when they go into the restaurants, they’re full, that everything is fine,” said Jeffrey Bank, chief executive of Alicart Restaurant Group, which owns Carmine’s and Virgil’s Real Barbecue. “And clearly it is not.”
The damage the pandemic has already done is coming into focus. Just before the state shut down indoor dining in March 2020, New York had more than 27,000 restaurants, according to the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The department does not yet have current figures, but Yelp, which tracks restaurant openings, shows there are now about 2,000 fewer. The city had 173,500 restaurant employees in June, a 38 percent drop from the 280,000 who were working in December 2019, according to the New York State Department of Labor.
More restaurants could be forced to close when the state’s moratorium on residential and commercial evictions ends Sept. 1. A recent poll by the networking website Alignable indicated that 41 percent of the state’s small businesses could not pay their rent in July.
While many restaurants recently received grants from the federal Restaurant Revitalization Fund, only about one-third of the more than 27,000 restaurants in New York state that applied for assistance got that lifeline.