South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Historic Dockers Restaurant & Pub to shut down again
Historic Dockers Restaurant & Pub, a dockside seafood tavern in Dania Beach with a beloved $5 burger special, will temporarily shut down again on Jan. 9 — this time, possibly for good.
It marks the second time in nine months that Historic Dockers, at 318 N. Federal Highway, has unexpectedly shut down, struggling to weather the rough seas of the pandemic, like so many other eateries. Last June, the delta surge and a staffing slump shut the restaurant for several weeks, but reopened in July with limited hours and workers.
But this time is different — and much worse, says John Conlon, director of operations at Sunchase Group, which also operates sister pub the Historic Downtowner in Fort Lauderdale.
“We’ll stay closed for an extended period of time — months, not weeks,” Conlon says. “We’re not sure we’ll ever reopen. With the omicron surge, and the CDC telling people not to get on cruise ships, this has really hurt business.”
Historic Dockers has replenished its staff, but without a patio, skittish diners aren’t showing up anymore, he says. In the short-term, Conlon will shift the restaurant’s staff to the Downtowner. But four employees — two cooks, a dishwasher and a bartender — will be laid off, he says.
“It’s been like this for weeks: People calling and asking, ‘Do you have outside dining?’ and when we say we don’t, they turn tail and leave,” Conlon says.
Conlan says he’ll continue paying monthly rent on the lease, and transform the restaurant into a private-event space like the Maxwell Room, the event space inside the Downtowner.
The fate of Historic Dockers stands in stark contrast to the unexpected boon in sales and traffic that the Downtowner has enjoyed since the pandemic. Now fully staffed, the 29-year-old restaurant-pub has doubled its revenue compared to 2019 pre-pandemic by drawing what seems to be an unstoppable deluge of customers coming from the new residential towers sprouting up around them, Conlan says.
“We’re just getting so many people who pay a crazy amount of money to live downtown,” he says. “And they’re coming here, because we’re the biggest discount retailer of waterfront dining around.”
Historic Dockers, often the first restaurant travelers discover when they’re headed south on Federal Highway from the airport, opened in 2015 and dished creamy clam chowder, shrimp fra diavolo and North Atlantic cod fish and chips. But it quickly gained attention for its $5 Historic Dockers burger, a brisket-short rib blend on a Kaiser roll that served as a restaurant-opening special but became so popular that its owner, Roger Chase, kept it on the menu permanently.
For now, the $5 hamburger will continue to be offered on Tuesdays at the Downtowner.
The Historic Dockers space, which overlooks the Cozy Cove Marina to the east, has housed a restaurant since at least 1947, when it was called the Dania Yacht Basin Restaurant.