San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Determined to outlast the coronavirus pandemic
As stressed and anxietyridden — and overworked — as many restaurateurs are right now, many say they are determined to vanquish the fallout from the virus without sacrificing their businesses. Some, like Afghan immigrant Tariq Wasimi, are working long hours, filling for servers and food runners, as a way to save money on labor.
“We’ve been able to break even because my business partner, Stavro Yousif, and I have put in 12-hour days for the last six months,” said Wasimi, owner of Flamin’ Pho & Sushi Bar in downtown San Diego. Before COVID, his restaurant could seat 72. Now it’s been slashed to 28, all outdoors. “We haven’t had a server, just he and I.”
“Here you go,” Wasimi said to a customer, who was picking up an order, as he spoke with a reporter. “Hi, can I help you?” he asked another.
This year was on pace to be the 2 1/2-year-old restaurant’s best. But after taking in $650,000 in sales last year, Flamin’ Pho is currently at only a quarter of that revenue. Loans from family members have helped keep the business afloat, and despite the lean times, Wasimi remains determined to not let his business slip away.
“It’s nerve-wracking because I’m just about to finally open inside dining and hire people, but I don’t want to be in that stage where two weeks from now I have to let people go,” he sighed. “I’m scared if the (coronavirus) rate goes up by a couple numbers and I’m shut down again. But I’ll be damned if I give up on this place. I’ll do whatever it takes to survive.”
Like Wasimi, longtime restaurateur Terryl Gavre has been working much longer hours, intent on keeping her venues open without incurring major losses. In a move to buy some time for the 10-year-old Bankers Hill Bar + Restaurant she owns with chef-partner Carl Schroeder, they are closing temporarily after this weekend.
While they were able to do enough business to break even, that was no longer possible when their federal loan money that amounted to less than $250,000 ran out a week ago, Gavre said.
The temporary closure of Bankers Hill is possible, Gavre said, because of the willingness of their landlord to give them free rent over the next several months as they regroup and await a wider reopening of restaurants.
“It’s all been very stressful. You are constantly running things through your head day and night, what if this happens, OK, then I’ll do this, and what if this happens. You don’t get any peace,” said Gavre, who also owns Cafe 222, a small breakfast and lunch spot in downtown San Diego. “Every time they make a change in the rules, you have to react by either finding your staff or laying them off again. So right now, with Bankers Hill, we’d rather wait and hold onto all our assets until we have a fighting chance to make a profit. I know we’ll be itching to get back in there.”
Even more daunting is the road ahead for the many bars in San Diego that have never served food and have made no arrangements to do so in order to comply with the current state guidelines that would let them open indoors at 25 percent capacity.
At the Lamplighter in
Mission Hills, the lights are off and the mood seemingly even darker at one of San Diego’s most well-known dive bars.
“We would be so screwed if my dad didn’t have other things going on,” said Jasper
“JJ” Sciuto, who helps run the bar with his brother Joe.
The family business — the senior Sciuto bought the bar in 1994 — has been closed since March, save for a twoweek window in late June when bars that don’t also serve food were allowed to open.
For now, the Lamplighter must remain closed until San Diego enters the next tier, when the county is deemed to be at a moderate risk level and daily new COVID-19 cases are between one and 3.9 cases per 100,000 residents.
Although without outdoor space, Lamplighter may have to remain closed until the county hits the even more seemingly out-ofreach yellow tier that means minimal COVID spread.
As a result, Lamplighter’s entire staff has been let go — even the brothers, who are collecting unemployment. Still, Joe Sr. is able to make the rent payments, meaning the bar, best known for its latenight karaoke and stiff drinks, is in no danger of permanently closing anytime soon, JJ said.
“We just keep waiting it out. My brother and I depend on this for jobs,” JJ said. “We’re now at the point where we need to find (new jobs).”
North County restaurant owner Grant Tondro understands well the roller coaster ride that has defined the COVID-19 landscape for local businesses. Not only did he and his two partners, Zak and Nate Higson, have to temporarily close or reduce operations at a few of their dining and drinking venues in Carmel Valley, Rancho Bernardo and San Marcos, but they also had to abandon plans for a major expansion that involved seven new projects.
“This last six months has been absolutely insane, between the constant changing restrictions and the overall public sense of fear,” said Tondro, who co-founded the 3 Local Brothers restaurant/ brewery company. “We’ve all got pivot fatigue because we have to reinvent our business every single day. I’m not sleeping, I’m eating too much and I’ve been stretched in ways I didn’t realize I could be stretched.”
As the prospect of increasingly vacant storefronts becomes an unfortunate reality in the coming months, the question becomes, how will that affect the daily life and character of San Diego’s mature, once vibrant neighborhoods?
“There will be a big difference between how things look like in one year vs. in four years,” says Bill Fulton, a former city of San Diego planning director and director of Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research. “In one year, it’s pretty grim. We’re going to see huge, permanent closure of all restaurants, bars and gyms. But once the system swallows all that, I see no reason why restaurants, bars and gyms would not come back, but it will take several years.”