The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Coronavirus has made 2020 a tough year for restaurants
EDGEWOOD PIZZA: and discovered a new career. He now helps restaurants, bars, nightclubs and lounges prepare for inspections and meet requirements for licensing and permitting, along with other operational needs such as menu creation and staff training.
Jordan’s firm advises clients of all backgrounds, yet being an African American native of southwest Atlanta motivates him to help Black entrepreneurs. But the reality today is different than it has been, with COVID-19 forcing an unprecedented number of drinking and dining establishments to close, temporarily and, in some cases, permanently.
Jordan says he’s seen lots of Blackowned restaurants and food businesses come and go quickly in Atlanta, and although he says there are tough times ahead for many of them, there’s hope that others will step into their places.
“I get calls every day, all day, for two things: ‘Walter, have you found me a building?’ and ‘Walter, I need to open up,’” Jordan says. “There are going to be several African American restaurateurs looking for opportunities. The prices are dropping considerably, so people are adamant about getting some of these turnkey opportunities as quickly as possible.”
‘I happen to be Black’
Atlanta’s Black business community is not monolithic. Despite what may seem like a tendency to specialize in a few popular formats, including lounge dining, soul food and island cuisines, the way they approach their businesses is as varied as any other owners and operators.
“Sometimes it’s great to be under the radar,” says Adonay Deglel, co-owner of Old Fourth Ward’s Edgewood Pizza. Deglel says he loves serving people and being part of the community of restaurants and bars along Edgewood Avenue, so much that he’s going forward with plans to open a new neighborhood bar concept near Edgewood Pizza at the corner of Boulevard. It’s called Handlebar, and it’s geared toward Atlanta’s passionate community of cyclists. He’s also opening a
West End location of the pizzeria.
While Deglel appreciates the support from being a Black owner, he says doing business correctly and being part of the local community is what matters most.
“I happen to be Black and I own a Black business that attracts over 80% to 90% of customers who are Black people,” he says. “It’s pretty amazing that everyone’s out there saying, ‘Hey, it’s a Black-owned business. Go out and support.’ But this is a business.”
His customers offered proof five years ago, when a fire forced the restaurant to close for a year and five months. “The day I reopened looked like I didn’t miss a beat. There were some doubters that thought I’d be run out of business, but I came back stronger.” The lesson he learned, he says, is simple: Understand the buying power of Black people, and respect the people who patronize the business. You’ll be appreciated, he says.
Deglel calls the pizza business “recession-proof,” and Chris Wiley, co-owner of the Oz Pizza chain, would agree. Having started in downtown Decatur in 1997, he and partner David Howard now operate three locations: Fairburn, Fayetteville and East Point. Being on Main Street in East Point, and owning the property, has been pivotal to his confidence in the business, he says.
Wiley says he doesn’t allow being Black to limit his view of what is possible at Oz Pizza, and he says other Black restaurateurs should also guard against such defeatism. “I believe it comes from the top, the leadership and the owner. Regardless of your race, if you’re true to your business and running business properly, regardless of the community you’re in, I don’t feel that it’s different.”
Money woes
The restaurant business is universally unforgiving. A 2014 study conducted with data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that 17% of restaurants close in their first year. The median lifespan of a restaurant startup with five employees or fewer is 3.75 years, which is lower than other service-oriented businesses with the same staff size, which average four years.
Survival for today’s restaurants is even more questionable. According to a recent report from the National Restaurant Association, the industry lost $120 billion in sales in the first three months of 2020, which it primarily attributes to the coronavirus. A survey fielded by the association during 10 days in May found that 8 million restaurant employees lost their jobs at the pandemic’s previous peak. co-owner of Old Fourth Ward’s Edgewood Pizza
There’s also the issue of funding: While 84% of the survey’s 3,800 respondents said they’d received Paycheck Protection Program loans, 75% said they did not expect to be profitable in the next six months without additional relief, and 78% said the PPP loans wouldn’t be enough to help them keep paying staff without a significant enough increase in short-term sales to cover labor cost.
Ownership of not just the business but the entire property is one way Wiley suggests. “If at all possible, purchase and own your property, because then you can own your destiny, because you don’t have that annual 3%-5% cost increase. You’re sitting on an asset. You control your destiny.”
Jordan, who helped the owners of Nashville-based Slim & Husky’s with their recently opened second Atlanta location, is in full agreement. “They own the land on Metropolitan,” he says. “If this ever fails, they can always get someone back in the building and make residual money. That’s what Blacks have gotta stop doing. We rent. You put a million dollars in it, and you’ll never own it.”
Seventeen years ago, Deglel and his brother Henok bought the Edgewood Pizza building at 478 Edgewood Ave., known then as Charlee’s Pizzeria, for $5,000. Since then, Deglel, who is known to friends and customers by the nickname “Bob Costanza,” says it has generated millions of dollars in revenue.
Just a few doors down from Oz on Main Street, Henry and Kascha Adeleye are the owners of Kupcakerie, a bakery and dessert shop that sits directly across from East Point’s library and MARTA station. They opened the brickand-mortar space in 2016, after two years of shipping and delivery. Having a physical location was always the plan, but the two years of early revenue helped them get around the challenge of not being able to find investment.
They bootstrapped, mixing earnings from their online business with minor investments from friends to get the space at 2781 Main St., which they rent. They chose the location because it already had natural charm and didn’t need a complete renovation. Henry grew up in East Point, and was able to market the business with relationships established from his childhood.
“We didn’t have access to any institutional capital or investors, parents. We had to save up the little crumbs and open with as little as we could,” Kascha says. “We knew we had to get the capital ourselves. It was a means to an end, starting where we are.”
‘Scrutinized a little more’
It’s a common story for Black owners, who say they have to work harder and smarter with less. And the Adeleyes say there are other ways in which race seems to play a role.