Feeling more like old times
As workers slowly head back to the office, happy hour crowds starting to gather once again
NEW YORK — With the unsteady return of workers to the office comes the shaky return of the happy hour.
The bar on the second floor of Beer Authority in Times Square was nearly full when Peter Torres and Jimmy Pazan, both 29, walked in on a recent night, but they managed to find two open stools at the corner in front of a TV airing sports highlights.
The two, who were hired by a bank during the pandemic and started to return in person over the past year, had just wrapped up their workday.
“After a particularly hard day at the branch, we come out,” said Pazan, whose drink of choice is a whiskey and ginger ale.
“It’s not planned; it just happens,” said Torres, who prefers a Stella Artois beer.
With more than 40 people at the bar, the general manager, Aoife Canny, said it was slower than it had been in recent weeks.
Even as companies struggle to coax workers back to the office, some bars are reporting that the weekday happy hour, an institution that has been around since the 1930s, is reaching a semblance of pre-pandemic times. With office occupancy nationwide averaging 41% — less than half the pre-pandemic level of 99%, according to workplace security firm Kastle Systems — central business districts are emptier than they were in 2019.
Still, those who are back in the office are going back to the bar after work.
Melisa Rodriguez, 24, and Samaya Mayes, 22, employees of an events company in New York City’s midtown, joined colleagues for an impromptu happy hour at Beer Authority on a recent Wednesday. Their company is back in the office twice a week.
“It’s a nice break from focusing on work,” Rodriguez said, adding that it offers a pause between the workday and her commute home.
Mayes, who was recently hired, enjoys the company of her co-workers outside the office. “It’s a time to be ourselves and not be uptight,” she said.
The pandemic shuttered about 90,000 bars and restaurants nationwide in the last two years, according to the National Restaurant Association; establishments that survived or have since opened face fewer customers and inconsistent business, as coronavirus cases in the country hover around 110,000 per day, according to a New York Times database.
And soaring prices for gas, groceries and other goods have been “kind of a double whammy for happy hours, in particular where consumers might be feeling like they are uncomfortable spending,” said Emily Moquin, a food and beverage analyst for Morning Consult.
At Jimmy’s Corner also in Times Square, Adam Glenn, the owner, said that before the pandemic forced his bar to close for 18 months, the happy hour crowd would begin to trickle in before most offices closed.
“If you weren’t there by 5 o’clock, you probably weren’t getting a seat,” he said. “You’d be standing, and we’d be packed.”
The bar has been in his family for 50 years.
But even as more offices reopen or require workers to return on some days, happy hour at Jimmy’s Corner still isn’t what it was before the pandemic.
“We’re, I would say, a lot closer to what we were before and really happy with how much stuff has grown since we reopened in October,” Glenn said. “But it’s still not quite the same after-work ... crowd that we used to have.”