Winter preparations under way
Heaters, warm drinks, lights added outdoors
All around the Bay Area, restaurateurs are adding roofs to parklets, tents to patios and heaters by tables in the hopes of combating rain and chill, in one case spending as much as $ 10,000 a month to rent equipment. Another restaurant is surrounding tables with an 85foot Christmas tree and lights for a winter wonderland theme — whatever it takes to get diners excited about dining in December.
The efforts are right on time: Rain was on the horizon for the first time in months on Friday in the Bay Area, with scattered showers throughout Northern California this weekend.
Even without the pandemic, winter is usually a slow season for restaurants, with business down by 25% to 50%, according to restaurant owners. Throw in the coronavirus, and restaurants are faced with relying on their outdoor dining setups during cooler, wetter weather, or inviting diners indoors — heightening the risk of coronavirus exposure to customers and employees amid fears of a second wave.
Some restaurateurs, like Vanessa Garcia of historic Brisbane pub 7 Mile House, have been saving as much money as possible this summer in the hopes of outlasting a quiet winter and keeping employees on the payroll.
“I’ve been worried about winter for three months. We’re all getting ready,” she said. “It’s going to rain. It’s going to be cold. People are going to be lazy about going
“We’ve never done this before. ... But we’ve also never been in the financial hole we’re in without a light at the end of the tunnel.” Clay Walker, Gott’s Roadside
out.”
Still, Garcia is weatherproofing the restaurant’s awning so she can still seat some diners outside if it’s raining. She added a fire pit and is buying more heaters. She’ll sell blankets alongside some hot, wintry cocktails. No matter how bad the weather gets, she doesn’t want to open indoors — she tried that briefly and it didn’t feel safe, she said.
At Gott’s Roadside, a Bay Area burger chain known for ample outdoor seating, Clay Walker doesn’t plan to open for indoor dining until there’s a vaccine. That means investing in a lot of big tents — similar to the ones often used at weddings, except they have no sides. They should go up at most Gott’s locations in December and stay in place through March.
“We’ve never done this before. We’ve just lived with seasonality,” Walker said. “But we’ve also never been in the financial hole we’re in without a light at the end of the tunnel.”
It’s a gamble, though. Despite the rain expected this weekend, climate experts predict a dry winter, and the tents can cost $ 10,000 a month to rent. At the very least, he hopes the tents will provide some warmth on their own, as he’s hesitant to add portable heaters — it’s another fire code complication and involves changing the propane constantly.
“We need to pick our battles,” he said. “We want to make sure we’re executing on the food and hospitality and not just turning into maintenance people.”
Over at the pandemicborn, 100seat outdoor restaurant the
Vault Garden, owner Ryan Cole is taking a multipronged approach to extend his restaurant’s success over the summer to the colder months.
He plans to transform the space for the season with an 85foot Christmas tree and tasteful lights strung up around the green space. Perhaps more important is a giant, clear tent — with partial sides and selective gaps on top for airflow — that Cole hopes will keep diners dry and warm, unless there’s a big storm.
The health department allows tents, as long as at least three sides are open.
“I’m going to end up spending as much money as it takes,” Cole said. “If we stopped now, I’d be laying off our entire staff. I strongly feel people are going to want this escape.”
But because of the uncertainty of winter, many restaurateurs are also planning for indoor operations. Cole has reopened the Vault indoors with $ 39, threecourse prixfixe menus — a standin for Cole’s temporarily closed restaurant, Trestle. Since the space is so large, it can still seat 53 people at a time even with the required 25% capacity limit. Fera Hashemi, who owns Redwood City restaurant Arya Steakhouse, predicts that indoor service will be the only way to make money during the winter. On a recent Saturday night, temperatures dipped below 60 degrees and the patio emptied out.
“It doesn’t matter how many heaters you have out there,” she said. “Everyone was like, ‘ Can we sit inside?’ ”
Both indoor and outdoor service are necessary to survive, some said. Chefs like E& O Kitchen and Bar’s Sharon Nahm say their regular customers are split on indoor versus outdoor dining. The San Francisco restaurant started building a parklet in October and designed it with a roof in anticipation of rain. That way, if indoor dining gets shut down again, at least they’ll have outdoor dining as an option, Nahm said.
“You hear around the country that cases are going up and it’s on the rise,” she said. “I think it’s good to be prepared.”