Nothing but misery on menu for city eateries
Closed restaurants hoping for rent relief, other aid to survive
Coronavirus is another business woe for Brooklyn restaurateur Blair Papagni, who is still paying down debt from a fire in 2018 that gutted her Greenpoint bistro, Anella.
The invisible killer virus wafting through the city forced Papagni to shut Anella — known for its fresh bread baked in flower pots — on March 15 and shift to “pay what you can” takeout meals at her other business, Jimmy’s Diner in Williamsburg.
A few days later, she closed Jimmy’s as well, wary of putting people in harm’s way. She had to let 30 staffers go.
“It was really hard to pull the plug,” Papagni, 40, told the Daily News. “I didn’t let myself cry because I feel like my job as the owner is to be the good team leader. But I was feeling pretty devastated.”
Papagni said she’ll do everything in her power to reopen, but she’ll need support. One major component will be help with the $15,000 in monthly rent she owes in total for both locations.
“When the fire happened, I immediately took out a personal loan for $100,000. I’m still paying that back,” the entrepreneur and mother of three said. “I would not feel comfortable taking on more debt not really knowing what the world will look like after this.”
She said grant money is what’s needed most, “not just rent deferment that we have to pay back when we reopen.”
“We need some rent forgiveness,” she added. “And maybe the cost for building owners can be offset in property tax or other tax breaks for them.”
Restaurant rents are notoriously sky-high around the city. Owners who spoke to the Daily News said the calculus of reopening will be extra tricky with daunting rents accruing each month and no sense of what margins will be when the lockdown lifts.
After 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy, resilient New Yorkers quickly banded together in public places to lean on each other and rebuild. This time it’s completely different, with social settings now viewed as possible areas of contagion, they said.
Jeremy Merrin, owner of the popular Havana Central restaurant in Times Square, said he had to lay off 400 people across four locations, burying him in regulatory red tape just related to that.
He’s worried aid programs administered by the Small Business Administration or the city’s Department of Small Business Services will require even more “overwhelming” paperwork and take months to process.
In the meantime, he could be racking up huge debt.
“For Times Square, it’s enormous rent. We pay a million dollars a year. I’ve had discussions with all the landlords and
told them we’re not in a position to pay anything at this point,” Merrin said.
“And once we reopen, we’ll need to talk about a process where we can catch up. A lot will depend on whether people feel safe enough to go out and eat again,” he said.
Trade groups like the NYC Hospitality Alliance and Relief Opportunities for all
Restaurants are lobbying city, state and federal officials for aid packages that include income replacement and rent abatement.
They say it’s critical to keep restaurants afloat considering the high number of people they employ and their vital importance to the city’s tourism industry.
A recent survey of 1,870 city bars, restaurants and night clubs found that nearly 68,000 employees have been furloughed due to mandated coronavirus closures, the NYC Hospitality Alliance said.
That snapshot is less than 10% of the roughly 25,000 eating and drinking establishments spread across the five boroughs, the group said.
“In New York City, we need a mechanism to forgive rents,” Alliance Executive Director Andrew Rigie said. “If this goes on for three months, these small businesses are not going to be able to climb out of the hole. It will cripple everyday, hardworking people with debt. We need financial forgiveness.”
Carlos Roman, manager of Tina’s Cuban Cuisine on W. 56th St. in Manhattan and co-owner of a sister location on Third Ave. near W. 57th St., said he shuttered everything March 17, letting about 30 people go at each shop.
Monthly rent at the 56th St. location is $25,500, while the Third Ave. one is more than $30,000, he said.
“Everyone right now is focusing on their families and their workers, but I think soon we’ll have to talk to the building owners. We have to figure out how we can deal with it. I don’t know what the city is going to give us,” Roman said.
“If we get relief from the government, maybe three months rent, of course we’ll reopen with more emotion and hard work than ever before,” he said.
“This is very scary at times,” he said. “But we have to put New York back on its wheels.”
Papagni said she’s “cautiously optimistic” officials will “do the right thing” and provide meaningful aid to small businesses.
In the meantime, “landlords are going to have to practice a little bit of patience in rent collection,” she said.
“Unlike the fire that just happened to us, this is like a fire and then a flood happening simultaneously to everyone across the city,” she said.