Sports bars suffer with fewer fans
week to week,” Hackett said, standing outside the pub. “It’s not sustainable really. We’re going to do the best we can for as long as we can in order to be here for our customers and our staff.”
As winter looms and the state tightens restrictions with coronavirus cases rising again, several Bay Area sports bar owners echoed Hackett’s concerns and uncertainty about what lies ahead.
Bars with meal service can be open outdoors right now in all nine Bay Area counties, with San Mateo County also allowing indoor dining at limited capacity. Six counties are under a state curfew order requiring outdoor dining and bars to close at 10 p.m.
The Kezar Pub, a fixture that predates the 49ers playing at nearby Kezar Stadium from the 194670 seasons, is drawing maybe 25% of prepandemic traffic, Hackett said. It’s down to a skeleton staff and trimmed its hours. But pivoting to the outdoor setup, especially with heating now involved, proved costly, and rent and insurance payments persist.
“It’s a challenge — we’re not quite breaking even,” said Hackett, who has owned the pub for 25 years. “We’ll have to take a very close look at the end of the year, you know? Because we can’t continue to operate like this and lose money.”
Sports bars, even those that already were serving food, have faced their own obstacles since March, when the first shutdowns canceled NCAA basketball tournaments and pushed back baseball’s Opening Day. For months, sports were shut down or limited. Even as sports bars reopened outdoors with reconfigured TV arrays, the hallmarks were missing: Crowds, cheering and highfiving strangers all register as risks in a pandemic.
The Boardroom, a North Beach sports bar, closed for about two months in the spring before reopening for takeout orders in June and outdoor service in early August, hoping to benefit from the start of football season. The bar did about 60% to 75% of normal sales in September and October, owner Keith Wilson said. But that dipped along with the temperatures in November.
“Our goal has always been just to break even,” Wilson said. “We’re so far behind, so the (past two) months were profitable, but for the year, not even close.”
Wilson said his bar draws loyal crowds for the 49ers and Oregon and Clemson football but was also counting on an Olympics boost this year. Staff were laid off after the initial shutdown and brought back on shorter hours. The Boardroom already had a patio and now has a parklet for a total of about 12 outdoor tables. Most held at least a few patrons this past Sunday afternoon.
“I think everything right now is a waitandsee mode,” Wilson said. “We’re going to do the best we can on the weekends with football because that will go through January. And then we’ll see what happens.”
In August, the California Restaurant Association, which represents few standalone bars, said it feared more than 30% of restaurants open prepandemic in the state could close permanently. Earlier this month, the National Restaurant Association said in a statement 100,000 restaurants of all types have closed nationwide and another 40% are unlikely to make it through the winter without additional federal relief.
Ben Bleiman, founder of the San Francisco Bar Owner Alliance, said that while some bars in the city were likely “buoyed” by Paycheck Protection Program loans and a late summer that helped outdoor business, the outlook barring another round of federal aid is “bleak.”
“I actually think the real devastation in terms of bankruptcies and permanent closures are going to happen in the next four to five months,” Bleiman said. “Between now and April, I think it’s going to be really bad.”
Bleiman drew a distinction between neighborhood bars that show sports and bars that bring in most of their revenue around sporting events, saying the latter “are probably suffering immensely.”
“The idea that some outdoor diners would have any impact on a bar that makes all of its money when it’s packed to the gills during playoffs, Niners games or March Madness ... they are two completely different things,” Bleiman said.
The pandemic has forced sports bars across the Bay Area to adapt. At its locations in Oakland and San Francisco, coowner Miles Palliser said, the Athletic Club formed a “mobile sports bar” by taking TVs and speakers off inside walls, putting them on stands and wheeling them outdoors every day. It also started a weekly standup comedy night. To trim expenses, the business cut back its number of satellite TV receivers and on some of the less mainstream sports it offered.
“Our motto is and will be in the future, ‘Any game, any sports, any time, with sound,’ ” Palliser said. “But now we joke that our motto is ‘Some games, some times, occasionally sound.’ It’s a different world, but everyone’s super understanding about it, so that’s nice.”
Palliser said weeks vary but the Athletic Club is making about 50% to 65% of its typical revenue. After laying off its entire staff in the spring, the business has rehired about 70% at its Oakland location and 80% in San Francisco. The PPP funds it received helped it survive but are used up.
“I think it’ll be tough if there isn’t a second stimulus package,” Palliser said. “I’m not quite sure how many businesses will survive, including us.”
Hometown Heroes East Bay, in Emeryville, is operating with a skeleton crew and nine outdoor tables and just breaking even, coowner Jerremi Clark said. Clark said he doesn’t want to close the bar for good but could consider returning to takeout service only barring an upturn.
“For us, I would say probably another six to eight weeks,” Clark said. “If it doesn’t get better or we get some type of relief, I’ll probably not shut the bar down, but close the doors until things get better. It makes more sense — instead of bleeding cash, just pay the rent we have.”
Others like Rookies Sports Lodge, with locations in downtown San Jose and the Willow Glen neighborhood there, say it makes sense to try to push through. Owner Michael Hobson said sales at the downtown San Jose location, which drew a business lunch crowd before March, are down more than 80%. Rookies trimmed its hours and menu and had to reduce staff from more than 70 to 13 people at its two bars. But Hobson’s two biggest costs, rent and small business loans, are still there.
“At least this way there is a little income coming in,” Hobson said. “Even if it’s the tiniest bit, it’s going toward paying off what would still be due if I was closed.”
Hobson said there are other reasons not to shutter — his employees, plus the idea that business would rebound quickly amid more normalcy.
“You’re just hoping for it to end as soon as possible, because you know you were doing well before,” Hobson said. “You keep thinking, ‘I’m going to stay in even though I’m losing money and we’re not doing well,’ because you keep thinking this is going to go away.”
Even in that scenario, James O’Sullivan, owner of O’Sullivan’s Sports Bar in Newark, isn’t sure if sports bars will be the same as before — at least at first. O’Sullivan’s was “fortunate” to bring in about 70% to 75% of prepandemic sales in September and October and has retained all its staff, he said. The bar also briefly reopened indoor dining at 25% capacity when allowed by Alameda County, but there wasn’t much demand as customers seemed hesitant.
“I think the days of 300 people in a bar to watch a Super Bowl, 250 people in a bar to watch the Warriors in Game 7, I think those days are over,” O’Sullivan said, adding: “I shouldn’t say over, but they’re not going to happen for a couple years.”
Other owners said they’re optimistic fans will return to sports bars in greater numbers. For now, “the tone is just different” at those establishments, said Palliser, the Athletic Club coowner.
“I definitely watch people struggle,” Palliser said. “I see them when their team scores a big touchdown, they jump up and they want to hug the stranger next to them. And everyone’s being really good about (not doing) it.
“One of the reasons we love owning sports bars is sports is one of the few things that can bring people together regardless of background or language spoken. … It’s not as much fun right now. I don’t know if we’re allowed to complain about not having fun — I think there’s more important things going on. But it’s definitely not as much fun.”