Down to zero
Harsh reality for restaurateurs
The nights are the worst. Pat Chaimontree stays up until 3am, reading and listening to podcasts to take his mind off his predicament.
He’s thinking about ways to save his business – popular Hamilton Vietnamese restaurant Banh Mi Caphe. How to save the jobs of his 19 staff, when his income is zero.
‘‘My mind, sometimes it just doesn’t shut off,’’ he says. ‘‘Even when you’re in bed you just lie there. You can’t go to sleep because you keep thinking about stuff.’’
It’s a dilemma facing restaurant owners nationwide: how to ensure businesses that exist on small margins at the best of times can remain viable in the age of Covid-19.
A Restaurant Association survey found one in five don’t expect to survive the pandemic.
Chaimontree agonises over the numbers. Before the lockdown about a quarter of his business was takeaway orders.
Even if he manages to increase that to, say, half after the level four lockdown ends, it won’t be enough to pay all his staff and there may be layoffs.
‘‘What sort of number do we need to do to keep all these people on? You’ve got to work backwards with the numbers,’’ he says. ‘‘I just hate uncertainty. I’m the guy who needs to plan for everything.’’
At the moment things are in limbo. The restaurant in Victoria St, central Hamilton, is shuttered and the staff are collecting the Government wage subsidy.
He and wife Anh, the restaurant’s administrator, burned through about $20,000 of their savings before the subsidy kicked in, so they could pay bills and wages.
Their landlord has given them rent relief for a month, which has been a big help.
Anh, who is a radiographer by trade and is on standby to work at Waikato Hospital if needed during the crisis, says they consider their staff family.
‘‘Every day I send out a question to them, ‘Are you OK, let me know how you’re feeling’. I get them to reply by email, so I can check and make sure they’re mentally OK.
‘‘It’s huge – they don’t know what’s happening, we don’t know. It’s the whole unknown.’’
Just a few short weeks ago, Banh Mi Caphe – named for the French-inspired Vietnamese baguettes – was a thriving eatery with a loyal following and a big social media presence.
Chaimontree started at the bottom of the hospitality trade. He came to New Zealand from Thailand with his family when he was about 11 and, after schooling, studied hospitality management at Waikato Polytechnic. He worked parttime as a dishwasher at a Thai restaurant while he studied, and later as a kitchen porter at an Italian place.
Dreams and reality
His dream was to be an ‘‘executive chef with a big hat at a hotel’’, but he settled for a cook’s job at a function centre and then in the kitchen at St Peter’s boarding school in Cambridge.
‘‘It was going from cooking fancy meals at a wedding, to a boarding school, cooking for like 1200 people – hot dogs, chips, pretend KFC ’cos they all want KFC. I remember peeling potatoes, that was a nightmare.’’
He took a break from hospitality for a few years – ‘‘I’d had enough of the hours’’ – and worked instead at a performance car parts shop.
It was through Japanese performance cars that he and Anh met. He had a Mazda RX7, she a Honda Prelude.
Anh was born in Hamilton to Vietnamese immigrants who’d run a bakery for many years. As a child she’d pluck herbs for her grandmother, who taught her about the subtle flavours and ingredients of Vietnamese cuisine.
Chaimontree remembers visiting his girlfriend’s family at weekends.
‘‘Her grandma will be cooking up a feast . . . and we used to have heaps of Vietnamese people come around. I’d be the only Thai guy there. It’s no complaint from me – it’s more food for me ’cos they’re all talking and I’m just eating away.’’
The couple married in their late 20s and now have two daughters, Ava, 7, and Lucy, 5.
Chaimontree decided it was time to be his own boss, and eight years ago the couple bought a small cafe in the suburb of Queenwood called Jam.
Initially, it was a disaster and they almost went bankrupt. ‘‘We just wanted to own a business – we just jumped right in.’’
Their accountant advised them to cut their losses and sell up; instead they knuckled down and set about turning their fortunes around.
With the help of a loan from Anh’s parents and some seriously long hours, they were able to make the cafe profitable.
They wanted to open a restaurant and were looking at buying a Thai place, but the deal fell over and Anh hit on the idea of a Vietnamese eatery as there were none in Hamilton.
They opened Banh Mi Caphe in an old kebab shop seven years ago, while still running Jam. ‘‘I would work at the cafe from 6am to 4pm, then be at Banh Mi Cafe at 5pm to 10pm,’’ Chaimontree says.
After a year of those gruelling hours, they sold the cafe.
Banh Mi Caphe started out small – just a 30-seater. It became popular, and Anh gave up her management position at Hamilton Radiology to help out.
A couple of years ago they moved to a bigger premises, a 120-seater about 100 metres from the old place, and after a couple of months it took off.
Chaimontree believes people became more interested in Vietnamese food and culture as the communist country opened up more to tourists.
‘‘We just went nuts as people found out about us, we couldn’t get enough people to work for us. We had 32 people altogether.
‘‘We sold out of food every single night . . . we’d have to stay and prep for the next day. The onslaught just kept coming and coming.’’
By the time Chaimontree and his family took a trip to Thailand last Christmas, numbers had dropped a bit, but Banh Mi Caphe was still a foodie favourite and one of the places to be seen in Hamilton.
It was while travelling through Singapore and Hong Kong airports that the family first encountered signs of the pandemic that would overrun the world.
‘‘We thought it was a bit weird – why did they stop us and take our temperature? When we heard about [coronavirus in] China, we realised what it was.’’
Back in Hamilton during March, Anh insisted they implement social distancing measures, reducing tables and asking people to sign a register.
As a health worker for 18 years, she had an idea it could be serious. ‘‘They keep talking about these superbugs and super-viruses and I knew that something would eventually happen.
‘‘The whole world has seen this coming but no-one’s been really prepared for it.’’
They were meeting in the restaurant with their managers, discussing how they could pivot to home deliveries, when they heard on the radio that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had announced a full lockdown.
They immediately began packing everything up.
Life in lockdown
Chaimontree has enjoyed the time he’s been able to spend with his family during lockdown, but it’s hard not to think about the business.
‘‘I go for a bike ride . . . for an hour with one of the girls. I have an electric bike with a little seat on the back.
‘‘I’ve been teaching them how to cook – yesterday we cooked butter chicken and we put it on Instagram – I didn’t realise so many people can’t cook.’’
He turned 40 last weekend. Instead of a planned family trip to Fiji he celebrated with a steak dinner and a bottle of 2013 Church Road chardonnay.
He’s been racking his brain for ways to keep the restaurant viable.
A friend with a restaurant in Hong Kong has been selling ‘‘cocktails in a can’’ for people to take home, while a mate with a Mexican place in Australia is able to sell bottles of wine with deliveries.
Chaimontree says it would be great if the Government allowed something similar here. ‘‘We
have a lot of alcohol left over that we’ve paid for and can’t do anything with it. Half of it is at my house right now.
‘‘In the first week of lockdown my wife didn’t like me so much because I’d been drinking all the stock.’’
The couple have been thinking of ways to make money if the alert level drops, but restrictions remain in place.
One idea is a pre-packed family box meal for home delivery. They hope to be able to launch their own delivery app soon.
Looking to the future
If the restaurant is able to reopen, he’s looking at perspex screens that can be placed between tables.
Chaimontree expects a boom in business if the restaurant is able to reopen, but doesn’t think that will last, because of the economic conditions.
‘‘We might have a good first week or two after reopening, and after that I think it will drop down.
‘‘We might have to change our menus, it might have to be simpler – use less ingredients so we can pass on the savings.
‘‘If people are feeling the pinch, I’m sure they won’t want that extra dessert or entree.’’
The couple own a food truck; in their worst-case scenario they would shut down the restaurant and operate from that.
Anh says they will do everything they can to keep their staff. ‘‘The staff we have are amazing and we don’t want to lose them. Coming out of this, if we had made everyone redundant, we’d have to go through the whole employment process again.’’
She says the staff are joking that they wish they could eat Vietnamese food again.
‘‘You work in that environment and you can’t eat a banh mi every day, but now that you can’t actually have it everyone is like, ‘Oh, I wish I could have a banh mi’.’’