Operator: Restaurant hotline. What is your foodservice emergency?”
Caller: Yeah, I need some help, pronto. There’s a big fat guy here, kinda strangely dressed, who insists he’s making a delivery. I keep telling him that deliveries go out the door, not in. But all he does is give these big belly laughs.
Also, he came in through the chimney. That hasn’t happened since we switched to 4-ounce wine pours. Guests were getting too rowdy with 6 ounces.
O: I see. Well, that’s certainly unusual. But what’s the emergency?
C: The guy can’t prove he’s been vaccinated. He won’t even put on a facemask because he says it pulls on his beard. And let me tell you, this guy could’ve been in ZZ Top.
O [sighing]: Let me guess: He’s accompanied by nine shaggy animals, all with antlers.
C: Ugliest dogs you’ve ever seen. We’d put ‘em out on the patio, but the beasts keep lunging for the carrots in other guests’ salads.
O: Have you ever heard of Santa Claus?
C: Of course. Those are the hot winds that blow across California. Or is it that town between Santa Ana and Santa Domingo?
O: Look, the situation is different than you think. Why don’t you just take in that big sack he’s lugging. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
C: Okay. Be right back. [Long pause.] I see what you mean! It’s filled with all the gifts a restaurateur could want right now, starting with 50 completed job applications. 50! We haven’t had that many leads since the Great Recession!
Looks like there’s also an approved RRF grant request. And you should see the supplies he brought us. Chicken wings! Cup lids! Takeout containers! Ketchup packets! Cream cheese! It’s like a big slice of normality, served up right here in our collective nightmare. [sounds of sniffling and whimpering]
O: Are you crying?
C: Yes, but not because the cup lids may be the wrong size. All these treats are perfect for the 2021 restaurant industry, but that’s the last place where I want to be in 2022. The pandemic and all the social upheaval that came with it have turned the business into the toughest enterprise the world has known since alligator mani-pedi’s were outlawed.
You can’t find enough employees, chairs or cases of tomatoes in Number 10 cans, and that’s just the start of the shortage list. Getting customers is easy, but you never know which one is going to turn bonkers on you because they’ve been asked to wear a mask or show a vaccination card.
My mortgage payments are less than what I pay for steak or poultry right now. Employees are threatening to form a union if I don’t let them run the business a few days a week, and I’m supposed to learn about something called an NFT because that’s supposedly the next big thing. I thought it was a new sports league.
I appreciate Mr. Red Suit’s generosity in helping us push forward. But I don’t know if I want to keep at it. This business is just too hard. I’m not sure if the juice is still worth the squeeze.
O: Maybe there’s one more thing he can leave you. The industry has been through a meatgrinder—no doubt about it. But you’re still here. Your business is still here. And the public showed in the darkest of times that its love of restaurants is unshakeable. This is a business that is joyful at its best, pretty lucrative even at its worst, and essential all the time. Try working in a call center.
Yeah, this has been a tough chapter. But the fat guy’s presence means we’re about to shut the one headlined “2021” and start a fresh stretch. Sales are soaring. We’re learning how to live with this damned virus instead of shutting down to dodge it. And we’re not so much getting back to “normal” as we are moving forward, into a new situation with new opportunities, albeit with a few old problems lingering on. Yeah, we’re dealing with surges and the need to learn all the letters in the Greek alphabet. But there’s no longer a piano on our back.
So give the old guy a shot of something that’ll curl his beard, throw a few carrots to his dogs, and take this season as the end of a very bad “old” and the start of what may be a really good “new.”
But I have to run. We’re getting all these complaint calls about some group called Restaurant Business hanging out of windows, shouting Happy Holidays and threatening to give an eggnog shower to anyone who insists the industry’s best days are behind it.
It’s been a rough road. But that year, thankfully, is over.