New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Closing indoor dining ‘a disaster’
With cases of COVID-19 spiking faster than they rose in the spring, restaurant owners are worried Gov. Ned Lamont will suspend indoor dining, just as colder weather makes eating outdoors less than comfortable.
New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker has said he believes the state should return to
Phase 1 for restaurants, which limited them to outdoor dining at 50 percent capacity, takeout and delivery. With outdoors impractical in the winter, restaurants effectively would be going back to where they were before May 20, relying on takeout and delivery alone.
They all may not make it until spring.
Scott Dolch, executive director of the Connecticut Restaurant Association, estimated that “over 600 businesses have either closed permanently or closed without a date of reopening,” based on information from the five largest food distributors in the state.
If Phase 1 were brought back, “we’d be looking north of almost 2,500 restaurants closing their doors” out of 8,500 statewide, he said.
Restaurateurs already are reporting a slowdown in business, which they attribute mostly to customers growing nervous about the rising number of coronavirus infections. There were 2,088 new cases in Connecticut on Friday, for a total of 101,469, with 4,828 deaths, according to the governor’s office.
“If I had to put money on it, I’d say we’re going to be shut down,” said Frank Basile, who owns three restaurants in Milford: Bridge House, Bonfire Grille and Founders House on the Green, which opened May 20, the first day restaurants were allowed to serve diners outdoors. “I don’t know honestly how anyone is going to get through the winter, the way we’re doing now.”
Like others, Basile said he would hope for state or federal aid in order to pay his bills and his staff of almost 100. He hopes he can keep most everyone on.
“I haven’t made any decisions yet because I’m trying to keep people working,” he said.
But the colder weather has seen his outdoor business drop. Halloween weekend, which was cold and wet, “was awful,” he said. “You can have 10 great weeks. If you have one bad week it’s like three bad weeks,” Basile said. “We’re down about 35 percent, 40 percent from where we were in the summertime.”
Starting out focusing mostly on seafood, steak and chops, he has had to be creative. Bridge House offers lower-priced items, a family pack for four, even pizza in a collaboration with Zuppardi’s Apizza in West Haven, which supplies the crusts.
He said this week is a challenge — he has to decide how many turkeys to buy and thaw — but after the holiday he will open a “ghost kitchen,” which is basically a second restaurant within the restaurant, offering different takeout items.
“It would rock me pretty hard if we had to close any of them,” he said of his three restaurants. “It’s just not in my blood to give up on anything.”
‘An impossible situation’
Elicker said restaurant owners are “in an impossible situation, especially because the federal government has not approved a second CARES Act, which can help them economically in these times.” In Europe, he said, “they’re paying bars and restaurants to stay closed.”
Here, as cases and deaths from COVID-19 rise, “business has gone down even without the additional restrictions because people are afraid to dine and they’re really struggling,” Elicker said.
But the mayor believes the rising number of infections makes it inevitable that Lamont will shut
down indoor dining.
“It’s only a matter of time. We’re going to have to do this,” Elicker said. “We should do this sooner rather than later … so we can open up faster. It’s better for the economy and business owners in the long run.”
While retail and businesses like hair salons have not seen a spike in cases, Elicker said restaurants, where people remove their masks to eat and sit closer than 6 feet apart, are among those places where it is “inherently more difficult to keep the virus under control or keep people from being exposed.”
‘After 10, lights out’
Lamont, at a Thursday news conference, said a decision whether to keep indoor dining would be “subject to the metrics.”
“I’m trying to do everything I can to keep restaurants and gyms open,” he said. “I think one of the more successful things we did in terms of enforcement is saying: restaurants, after 10, lights out,” he said.
Lamont said he thought it more effective to coordinate with New York and New Jersey on rules for restaurants and gyms. Schools are the only area in which municipal officials can decide whether to keep open or to go online.
Elicker said he is not singling out restaurants and that the city’s economic development department is helping promote takeout and delivery options, as well as opening up outdoor areas, such as traffic lanes on Orange and College streets and an all-weather shelter outside Olea on High Street.
Elicker referred to a report by the state Department of Public Health, which found
that of 69 clusters of coronavirus outbreaks, 20 were traced to restaurants.
Under 1 percent positive
Dolch of the restaurant association questioned how the data was gathered and said people were asked to check a box saying where they had been, which doesn’t necessarily locate the source of the infection.
“It was very frustrating. It’s not that they’re not wearing a mask inside the restaurant,” he said.
“Let’s be honest with each other about the data that’s out there,” Dolch said. Restaurants have been allowed to serve indoors since Phase 2 began June 17, and the positivity rate was “under 1 percent that entire time,” he said.
“Public health will always be our No. 1 priority,” Dolch said. “We are an industry that are leaders in safety and sanitation” and which undergoes routine health inspections. “My concern is a rollback like the mayor would like would put tens of thousands of people on unemployment.”
A heated, outdoor patio
Not all restaurant owners are worried. Alison DeRenzi, co-owner with her husband, executive chef Francesco d’Amuri, of L’Orcio in New Haven, said “we’re just bracing for the inevitable,” but, with a heated patio and multiple indoor levels, “obviously Phase 3 was fantastic for us,” though they never increased their indoor capacity to the allowable 75 percent.
DeRenzi said they’ve bought additional heaters for the 12-year-old patio and added plastic windscreens. “I would love to be able to continue to do indoor dining because we want to serve people at all comfort levels,” she said. But fewer people have been eating inside in the last few weeks.
“I think we’re mentally prepared” for outdoor-only, she said. “We had a great summer. We worked a lot and our customers were able to support us.”
Business slowing down
Nontas Groumousas, manager of the Branford Townhouse Restaurant, is more concerned. “It would be a struggle. It would be a long winter” if indoor dining were shut down, he said.
His family didn’t put picnic tables outside on May 20, the earliest date they could, out of caution. “We were a little apprehensive about that at first,” he said. “Now that it’s 30 degrees out, it’s pretty much stopped.”
Groumousas said business has slowed down as coronavirus cases rise.
“Luckily, we still have a great following, a wonderful customer base,” he said. “Takeout has increased tremendously, numberswise.”
Ingrid Forero, manager of Brasitas, a Latin fusion restaurant in Stamford and Norwalk, said the restaurant’s 22-year reputation has brought it through the pandemic so far, with takeout helping during the lockdown phase.
“The restaurant could probably survive a little bit, but we worry about our staff because [for] most of them, this is their only job,” she said. “We’re somewhat stable in our finances, so we could probably get through it.”
While Mother’s Day and Cinco de Mayo were “really busy” and August was a good month, business was “very, very slow last week … the slowest week we had since we were open,” Forero said. “We were doing pretty good. We were kind of getting back to normal.”
Part of the issue is her clientele is mostly 40 and older. “People in their 50s and 60s worry about it a little more than younger people,” she said.
‘It would be a disaster’
Manuel Romero, co-owner and executive chef at Olea, a Spanish and Mediterranean restaurant, said he’s willing to shut his indoor space in order to get the coronavirus under control. “As we all can see that the cases are going up. … It’s not going to help the business but I think we should get together and solve this problem as soon as possible,” he said.
“As long as we cooperate together, the sooner we get this done, the better it’s going to be for every single business.” He added that the restaurant owners need financial help to stay open.
Stephen Fries, a food writer for the New Haven Register and a professor of hospitality management at Gateway Community College, said if indoor dining is shut down during the holiday season “it would be a disaster.”
“They’ve invested a lot of money to retrofit the interiors of these restaurants,” with plastic barriers between tables, he said. “We’re talking about thousands of dollars for those.”
While large chains may be OK, “It’s going to be tough for the mom-and-pop single restaurant,” Fries said. “It really depends on their landlords. It depends on whether they have deep pockets. Most mom-and-pops don’t.”
He said takeout and delivery does not bring in enough revenue for most restaurants to keep their staffs employed. “It’s helpful, but I don’t think it’s the savior,” he said. “Some of them are doing delivery and to-go, but your full-service restaurant is not going to survive on that.”
Already, some restaurants have closed, including John Davenport’s at the top of the Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale, at least temporarily. Fries said high-end restaurants are not going to do a good takeout business because people pay a premium price for the ambiance and the “beautiful plating.” He said the reaction is, “I don’t need to spend $35 on a meal that’s going to come in a box.”