It’s all decks on hand!
Outdoor dining brings a rush of business to Hub-area eateries
apparently, if restaurants open outdoor dining, customers will come. With Phase 2 allowing eateries throughout the state to offer patio seating as of this past Monday, the last several days have been a relatively pleasant surprise for business owners who feared that continued coronavirus concerns would still keep diners at home.
“We unlocked the doors on Monday and had no idea if there were going to be only six people out there,” said Sarah Wade, chef and owner of Stillwater. “We got slammed. I mean, slammed for 11 tables, but still slammed.”
“It was definitely, definitely, definitely way more than expected,” said Sheila Senat, general manager at Coppersmith in South Boston. “We all thought that a lot of people were still going to be a little scared and that they were going to wait for the first wave and then eventually come out.”
“Nope,” she laughed, adding that the South Boston did 340 covers its first day operating outside.
Jason Santos, chef and owner of Buttermilk & Bourbon, has also received an unexpected number of reservations for his Back Bay establishment, with tables totally taken through next week.
“We are completely booked all day, all night, for 10 days straight, which is just unbelievable,” he said. “It was just the best of the best case scenarios.”
“The only downside to this is if it rains, it’s a giant financial hit,” Santos added as a disclaimer. “If it rains, we go from doing 200 people to zero. I’ve been watching the weather as if I were a meteorologist.
As long as the weather works in restaurants’ favor, it seems like they’re relatively optimistic about the earning potential of outdoor dining.
“You can make money off of those tables,” Wade said. “You just have to turn them.”
Like many local restaurants, Wade’s downtown spot has set time limits for each party sitting down to a table. With a steady flow of customers coming in and out, they hope to maximize the number of covers they’re doing per service and finally make some money after so many months of being closed.
“It’s not my favorite style of service, but it can be done,” Wade said. “There will be days again when they can linger at tables however long they want.”
However, holding people to their allotted time slots is a challenge for folks who are literally in the business of being hospitable.
“It was very hard for us to turn tables,” Senat said. “Nobody wanted to get up. I think that for everybody, it was the first time that they’re actually able to go out and sit at a restaurant.”
Senat added that Coppersmith and many other restaurants are also still ironing out issues with properly staffing their patio service mid-pandemic.
“We were not 100 percent ready (on Tuesday) because we didn’t expect that huge of a turnout,” Senat said. “The kitchen was definitely understaffed, but people were very understanding for the most part.”
“There was one table in particular, where I went to go apologize because their food was taking too long,” she added. “I was like, ‘I’m so sorry, I know it’s been like an hour that you’ve been waiting.’ You know what the response was? ‘We’ve been waiting since March.’ It was so nice.”
In general, customers appear to be understanding and appreciative over this past week — and that’s finally giving restaurateurs and their staff a sense of hope.
“Everyone is just so kind and so happy, and we’re like, ‘OK, guys, we can do this and it’s going to be alright’,” she added. “Their kindness and positive attitudes have driven us to be like, ‘OK, we can do this.’”
“Everyone has been super generous with tipping,” Santos said. “I actually just overheard my servers saying, ‘I can’t believe how much we made yesterday. This is amazing. I can actually pay my rent!’ I literally just got goosebumps.”
“It just makes me even more ambitious and more fired up,” he added.