Summer SLOWDOWN
Local restaurants cool down during Arizona’s hotter months
The winding blocks of Old Town Scottsdale are bursting with local businesses. But in the height of summer, the sun-baked streets look more like an old West ghost town than downtown Scottsdale’s restaurant and retail core. ● Super Chunk Sweets & Treats and New Wave Market are in the middle of the tourist-friendly area, tucked in a storefront off Sixth Avenue between Stetson Drive and Scottsdale Road. ● Country Velador and her husband Sergio own and operate the bakery and cafe. Country bakes decadent deserts such as her signature John & Yoko honey tres leches cake and mesquite chocolate chip cookies made with Arizona mesquite flour. Like many local business owners in the Valley, operating the restaurant is a labor of love for the husband-and-wife team.
One that gets all the more difficult during the summer months.
“We get a few stragglers in the morning and then a lunch rush of regulars, then an hour after lunch we are empty,” says Country, sitting at the modern wooden bar connecting her bakery sweets case to the dining room of the cafe. “Like many small businesses, we support ourselves on credit and pay it off in season.”
Country estimates that her business drops by about 75% during the summer. For any local restaurant, that is a hard figure to stomach. In Phoenix, where the temperatures hover around the 110 mark for months at a time, mom-and-pop shops really feel the heat.
Why some restaurants close for the summer
In mid-July Barrio Café Gran Reserva sports a paper note stuck to the glass front door letting customers know the restaurant is closed for the summer. The gold lettering of the restaurant’s signs shine in the hot summer sun, but the popular destination restaurant just doesn’t get enough foot traffic to stay open, says owner and chef Silvana Salcido Esparza.
“There are different ways of approaching summer here,” Esparza says. “Sometimes it really feels like Jack Nicholson in ‘The Shining.’ There’s just no one here.”
Gran Reserva is an offshoot from Esparza’s original restaurant, Barrio Café, on 16th Street. The original restaurant stays open for the summer and allows Esparza to provide work for her staff and keep a little money flowing during the hot months.
“We have been doing this for 17 years with some longterm employees, so it effects all of us, it effects my pocketbook and their pocketbooks,” Esparza says. “I’m like a mom, I tell everybody, ‘Hey, watch your paycheck, it’s the summer.’”
While each season brings unique challenges, increasing costs such as the 2019 bump in minimum wage leave local restaurant owners with less wiggle room than before. Unexpected costs can be the difference between staying open or closing for good.
“There was one summer where we made a lot of money, and one summer I thought I was going to die,” Esparza says. “The walk-in, the cooler and the AC all went. As soon as it hits 100 something goes.”
Located in an old pie factory on Grand Avenue, Gran Reserva is simply too hot in the summertime to operate according to Esparza, and with such little traffic coming in to eat, the investment of installing another air conditioner wouldn’t be worth the cost.
“Big corporations have flows,” Esparza says. “When you’re small like me, we have to watch the nickels and dimes.”
How location effects the summer slump
Location holds enormous importance for small businesses as the neighborhoods surrounding their building provide the all-important regulars that keep so many small businesses afloat.
For Julian Wright, owner of Pedal Haus just off Mill Avenue in Tempe, students from neighboring Arizona State University drive the bottom line. In an area where a large portion of the regulars go home for summer break, businesses must be especially strategic about how they survive the hot months.
“We just get a really big straw to breathe through and all take turns gasping for oxygen,” Wright jokes. “But in all seriousness, I’ve owned restaurants up and down the street for years and you know it’s coming, so you have to tighten your belt before the doldrums of summer hit.”
From the restaurant’s busiest month in March, to the slowest month, July, Wright estimates there is about a 50% downward swing in sales. He makes the most of the slow months by switching his focus to improvement.
For the last three summers, Pedal Haus has undergone renovations through the slow months, including switching the bar from lounge seating to high top tables last year.
This summer, the restaurant’s private dining space is getting a makeover and will be about three times the size once construction is complete. Along with birthdays, beer dinners and parties, Wright hopes the new space will attract more corporate events as local companies stay open and provide business year-round.
Wright and the team of chefs at Pedal Haus are also using the summer to perfect new menu items that will roll out in early to mid-August. Most of the restaurant’s staple dishes will continue to be served, along with a variety of new gluten-free and vegan options.
As for staff, Wright is in a unique position where his employees often want a break for the summer.
“Luckily we have a lot of student labor at our disposal,” Wright says, “so that kind of takes care of itself.”
Businesses along Mill Avenue are among the most location-dependent in the Phoenix metro area, but for local chain Postino, the magic is in the building itself rather than the cross streets.
Owned and operated by Lauren Bailey of Upward Projects, Postino started in Phoenix in an old post office from the 1940s. The local chain has steadily expanded and now has locations in Houston and Denver as well as throughout metro Phoenix.
“If we just wanted to go in every mall across the country, we could do that pretty easily,” says Bailey, “But what we are trying to do is a little different.”
Each Postino restaurant opens in a building that the company restores and renovates. According to Bailey, it’s this infusion into the fabric of the neighborhoods that keeps people coming back.
Perhaps because fresh bruschetta and wine sound good at any time of year, or because of their location in residential neighborhoods, Postino doesn’t slow down considerably during the summer.
Bailey finds that she is constantly surprised by how willing guests are to sit outside.
“We still seat our patio, I’ll run in there and think oh my god, people are sitting outside right now. But we’ve got really great misters,” Bailey says of Postino’s Phoenix
locations.
And in Denver?
“They’ll be sitting out there in their puffer coats and it’s like 40 degrees,” she says. “They’re fine with that, and so we actually have a really nice long season there.”
Regulars are ‘our bread and butter’
While having multiple locations with fairly opposite high seasons helps, Postino’s menu also evolves to include summer specials to draw in more customers and keep the regulars coming back. Currently the menu includes a special that lets customers buy bottles of wine to take home at a discounted rate.
“We get more focused on what people want in the summer,” Bailey says. “And that’s food, that’s wine, they want to sit by the pool and have an awesome glass of rose, and now can we be a part of that.”
The Veladors also offer summer specials at their bakery and café, both to help draw in new faces and provide new options
for their repeat customers. A fresh poke bowl on Wednesdays, a fried chicken sandwich on Thursdays and a new meatball sub special on Fridays have helped increase business a little this summer.
“We talk to our customers and find out where they like to dine, what they enjoy,” Sergio Velador says. “By getting to know our customers we hope to bring them back in. They are our bread and butter.”
The couple are also preparing for new hours at New Wave Market come autumn, at which point they hope to open during the evenings. They are using the summer downtime to add romantic lighting to the dining room to make the cream booths cozy for date night and are enclosing the patio area so they can serve alcohol outside.
But while having time to improve is important, an empty restaurant with one or two customers trickling in doesn’t help pay the bills.
“Restaurants open and close on a dime,” Country says. “Our regulars really keep us alive during the summertime.”
How to support local restaurants
“Shop local” or “local first” is a trendy turn of phrase seen in hashtags and on
store windows across the country, but what does it really mean?
According to Local First Arizona, a nonprofit that works to heighten awareness of supporting local businesses, for every $100 spent at a local business, $43 stays in the local economy versus only $13 at a non-local business.
Not only does the money stay in the community, but, according to Local First Arizona, when local businesses do well, more jobs are created and local culture and diversity within the community are supported.
Thomas Barr, executive director of Local First Arizona, helps local businesses learn how to prepare for the slow season when temperatures ramp up and foot traffic runs dry. “We really encourage our local businesses to think creatively and collaborate together,” Barr says.
Collaborations such as partnering with a local brewery for a special beer dinner are beneficial for multiple local businesses at once. He also advises businesses to change their hours, make any improvements or renovations that are needed and to start catering services so they can go to the customers rather than waiting for them to come in.
As much as the businesses can do to help themselves, customers can make a huge impact on the livelihood of business owners and the longevity of their businesses. Barr encourages people who want to help start simple and try to switch 10% of their spending to local businesses.
In addition, customers can help even more by leaving a review or asking if the restaurant carries any local products or ingredients.
“Those things are really big deals for those restaurants,” Barr says. “You can digitally do it and just tell your friends and family what a great experience you had. You can ask if they have any Arizona beers and wines on tap. It creates a pipeline for those businesses to have a platform to sell their products too.”
For Country and Sergio Velador, the realities of the summer struggle in Phoenix are all too real. Both Super Chunk and New Wave Market need their off-season regulars to be able to stay open for the ontime tourists.
“There’s always the restaurants that are out there that are hidden gems,” Sergio says. “But people need to support those hidden gems or they will disappear.”