A TABLE FOR WHO?
Diners still a bit leery about venturing out to restaurants and bars
To put it into racecar terms, Fiore Moletz’s RPMs were in the red.
After three months of doing takeout during the COVID-19 pandemic, he was fired up and excited on June 5 for the first day of resumed dining room service at he and his wife Michelle’s Zelienople restaurants, Della Terra and Burgh’ers.
The state had given the green light, allowing indoor dining with a 50% capacity limit. But customers, well, thus far they appear to be running under the yellow caution flag.
“I was so pumped for that Friday’s service, to be able to be on the floor and talking to guests. We were ready for it, and then, … I was a little disappointed at the turnout,” he said.
“We expected to do a really decent business. We spent some time and money working on the patio at Burgh’ers Zelienople, and it just — it didn’t turn out. People didn’t come out.”
That seems to be a common theme at area restaurants as customers dip their toes back into social settings. An emphasis on safety that includes limiting crowds and enhanced cleaning protocols wasn’t enough to lure many customers back.
“I do think that people will get more comfortable, but I also think that people don’t feel real safe coming out in groups. They’re a little leery, and I don’t blame them. We’re doing everything that we can as far as safety is concerned, and we’re trying to get that right,” Mr. Moletz said.
“But I don’t think we should do anything crazy. The last thing we’d need is to go into another quarantine mode. We are suffering as a business, as an industry, but we should take it slow and follow the science. We’re suffering. But how about the older people? They are at the highest risk. It’s a really hard balance between the personal and business to manage this as a human being.”
Mr. Moletz reported a slight uptick in business this past weekend, but nothing of any real significance.
At Honest John’s, a small modern family restaurant in Homestead, chef and general manager Jen Burfield echoed those sentiments.
“We’re just trying to take it slow and navigate as we go and see if we can get it figured out. It seems to me this is going to be a real tough road for a real long time, for a lot of people,” she said.
Ms. Burfield said their takeout and curbside delivery have done very well, but the dining room has been a harder sell.
“We do have diners coming in, but we’re mainly seeing our family, friends and regulars. Business certainly is not booming,” she said.
“Most everyone wants to sit outside. And so far, we’ve been able to accommodate that.
“So far, all of our patrons have been very respectful,” she said in regards to the new rules of doing business. “We have signs posted asking that you wear masks when you enter, exit and move about the building. People haven’t had any problems doing that.”
The new protocols take some getting used to — for customers and workers. Masks make it difficult to communicate and make it easy to, say, be charged for a peach sundae when you ordered a peach soda, with the cashier’s question “One spoon?” turning into a “Who’s on first” exchange.
At Yoli’s Cucina in Jefferson Hills, chef and co-owner Ben Bartilson said that’s actually happened quite a bit.
“When you have the mask on, you kind of take away that personality at the table,” he said. “I’m pretty dry and sarcastic, so if you don’t have a smile to go along with it, it kind of falls flat.”
But, he added, “We’re blessed and very lucky that we are able to do it all.”
“It’s probably more different for our staff than it is for our customers,” says co-owner Jennifer Walzer, of Inner Groove Brewing, which on Saturday celebrated its first year in Verona.
There, they took pains to make coming-in customers comfortable — putting some tables near the bar for people who for now can’t sit or stand at their favorite spot — and to make them smile by marking off boundaries for tables with the phrase, “Drink inside the box.”
“This is serious,” she says, “but we try to make it a little fun.”
As for customers, “everyone’s been super respectful of the guidelines,” she said. In fact, they loosened a rule that back patio customers had to use the outside walkway to come in to use the restrooms.
“We expected to have to change more,” she said.
Establishments are continuing to adapt. Castle Shannon’s Mindful Brewing Co. didn’t open for limited dine-in customers until Tuesday. Customers were required to order and pay for their food in advance — something that young customers found to be fine, but some older ones
did not.
“That interaction with a server is for a lot of people part of the experience of coming to a restaurant,” said brewer Marcus Cox.
He and his colleagues have had to work to get the configuration of tables right, which is impossible when you are guessing how many people will want to sit there. Having one customer occupying a table for 10, which happened there, is not an efficient use of limited seats. “We’ve reshuffled the furniture a few times.”
They also had a hard time getting new picnic tables, picket fencing and artificial grass they used to transform the parking lot out front into more outdoor seating, because so many other establishments have been doing the same thing. Meanwhile, he noted, they took advantage of their relative down time to launch a brand new food menu.
That was also the case at Stagioni on the South Side, where owners Cara and Stephen Felder have done a steady takeout business, but only reopen to the public on June 17. They’ve remodeled and reconfigured their dining room and bar area and have overhauled their rustic Italian menu.
In Carnegie, LeoGreta added tables on its sidewalk out front on Friday and over the weekend opened more on a quickly put-together patio out back. The narrow interior only seats 40 in normal times. Now, it seats just 20, with tables on one side separated from tables on the other side by shower curtains hanging down the middle.
“You gotta do what you gotta do,” says owner and chef Greg Alauzen, who is doing whatever it takes for his restaurant to survive. “It’s my baby. It’s my life.”
Regular customers, he said, have done everything they can, from ordering takeout every week to tipping extra well. In fact, the shower curtain idea came from a customer who saw it at a restaurant in Ohio. “They care,” he said.
Only time will tell if and when commuters will once again fill the park-and-ride lot across the street and when LeoGreta can open its upstairs event room or the adjacent wine bar Mr. Alauzen and company have been chipping away at.
Takeout is probably going to remain a big part of business, even as more people return, Mr. Cox agrees. “Everyone’s preference is to be in a bar or a restaurant instead of on the couch at this point.” But lots of people still are being cautious.
South Side’s Ed Vidunas, a brewery historian and pub aficionado, ventured a couple of times into Fat Head’s and appreciated how the staff is keeping things clean and customers spaced apart. With the limit of 50 percent occupancy, “it is actually nicer to go,” he said, before musing on resuming his brewery visits. “But I think a lot of old-timers are wary in coming back right now.”