‘RESILIENT’ RESTAURANTS TAKE HIT
Dining-out ban tough, but understandable
Many of the restaurants that dominate Boston’s North End will close their doors for the next three weeks, but the chefs and owners behind the city’s Italian restaurants say the governor’s ban on dining out is necessary to stop the coronavirus pandemic from reaching the same levels it has in their home country.
“We get updates from Italy every day,” said Nick Varano, whose 89-year-old father has been in isolation in Calabria, Italy, for 17 days. The country has become increasingly shut down as cases of coronavirus spike. As of Monday, 24,747 had contracted the virus with 1,809 deaths, according to the World Health Organization.
“If we follow instructions we may do a little better. We have zero deaths here right now. Let’s use common sense,” said Varano, who employs about 40 people at his three restaurants, Strega restaurant, Rina’s Pizzeria and Nico, all in the North End. Only Rina’s will stay open — Varano said “it’s not worth it” to open fine-dining restaurants for takeout.
Gov. Charlie Baker on Sunday banned eating out at restaurants across the state for three weeks beginning Tuesday until April 6.
The restriction on eating out will have a “huge impact” on the restaurant industry, said Fiore Colella, chef and owner of Ristorante Fiore on Hanover Street. The impact goes beyond servers, chefs and bartenders to subcontractors like linen-delivery companies and food wholesalers, he said.
“I’m worried about my employees — how will they pay rent? I’ll try to help them out as much as I can, but I hope the governor really meant what he said about employees getting support from the state,” Colella said.
Massachusetts’s restaurants employed 277,300 people in 2018, the most recent year for which data is available, according to the National Restaurant Association. The industry supported a total of 349,300 workers when factoring in nonrestaurant foodservice positions. Restaurants generated $18.7 billion for the state’s economy that year.
Those workers are largely low-income earners making less than $60,000 a year, said Melissa Gopnik of the finance thinktank Commonwealth.
“We know that most hourly workers are already struggling and don’t have emergency savings,” Gopnik said, citing federal statistics indicating more people earning $60,000 a year or less have less than $400 in savings.
“Lots of people are going to be in crisis mode extremely quickly because they have no cushion to fall back,” Gopnik said.
Cynthia Chavez of East Boston, and a bartender at Fiore, said she’s concerned about making rent come April 1.
“This is my only source of income. I survive off tips,” she said.
Frank DePasquale said he hopes to be able to keep all of his 500 employees on the payroll. He plans to keep four of his six North End restaurants open for takeout but said he anticipates a financial hit.
“We’re all a bit nervous, but we’re just going to have to make the best of it,” DePasquale said. “In this neighborhood, we are North End strong.”
Baker has waived the seven-day waiting period for workers affected by closures intended to slow the spread of coronavirus and on Monday announced a $10 million loan program for some small businesses struggling to make ends meet amid widespread restrictions.
Stephen Clark of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association said this is an “unprecedented time” for restaurants, employees and customers, but said he the “resilient” industry would survive.