This story is part of RB's look at the impact of the pandemic on the restaurant industry.
For Michael Roper, longtime proprietor of Chicago gastropub Hopleaf, the past year has been a roller coaster ride for which he never wanted a ticket.
Rebecca Masson, owner and pastry chef of Houston’s Fluff Bake Bar, simply said she is bone tired.
And Ellen Sledge, owner of Penny Lick Ice Cream Company in Westchester County N.Y., said she is grief-filled, panicked, but so grateful to still be in business.
“There are days when I am absolutely in total despair,” Roper, who has owned the upscale neighborhood tavern for nearly 30 years, said. “I have had trouble sleeping. I fear all of my eggs are in one basket.”
But then, he said, a customer will walk by while he’s sitting alone in his empty bar. They might give a thumbs up or knock on the window and wave.
“My core staff, my neighbors, my customers have really been vital to bringing my optimism back,” he said.
An unprecedented crisis
Restaurant owners, by training and by nature, are used to a certain level of chaos. Many would say they thrive on daily problem solving and thinking on their feet.
The cooler craps out? They know who to call. Dishwasher ditches a shift? They roll up their sleeves and get in the pit. Nobody’s buying the chicken special? They turn it into Thursday’s soup du jour.
But the coronavirus pandemic is unlike anything anyone--even the smartest independent restaurant operator—has ever seen. And neighborhood restaurants, without the deep pockets of chains, have been among the hardest hit of the crisis. More than 110,000 restaurants closed around the U.S. in 2020, according to the National Restaurant Association.
“There’s always crises in our business,” Roper said. “There’s competition and there’s labor problems and bad weather and mechanical problems. I can deal with that. This has been on another level all tougher and extremely stressful and completely unanticipated.”
Once Chicago’s weather became untenable for outdoor dining, Roper decided to “mothball” Hopleaf. He paused his vendors, suspended workman’s comp and other insurance, and kept the heat on enough just to keep the pipes from bursting.
“We still lost money every week by being closed,” he said. “But we’re losing less money that way than trying to make money with all the restrictions on capacity and hours … What worked for me is not going to work for everybody.”
Last March, Hopleaf had 65 employees. Roper plans to reopen on April 1 with about 25 workers.
He has cross-trained everybody on every task, pared down the menu, added new kitchen equipment and tightened up the once-vast beer list.
A year of changes
Masson, the pastry chef, has operated her bakery since 2011. She recently moved locations, though, opening her bright and airy bakery just two days after Houston ordered the closure of all indoor dining.
“I learned how to set up online,” Masson said. “We started shipping. We deliver. I used to have six employees; now I have one.”
She added, “I’m tired. It’s a good thing I like what I do.”
Proud to be ‘still standing’
Sledge, who owns the ice cream company, writes regular update letters to her small group of investors.
“Penny Lick is still standing,” was the first line of her recent correspondence, she said.
Her retail side was only down about 8.5% in 2020 compared to the previous year, she said, but wholesale took a major hit as her small accounts went under or were unable to pay their bills.
“Retail did better than I thought it would,” Sledge said. “We sold more than three times as many pints of ice cream in 2020 than we had ever. People comfort ate or rage ate their way through the year.”
Sledge spent the early part of the pandemic in her SUV, driving all over Westchester County and the surrounding areas, delivering pints of ice cream.
She said the year for her, emotionally, encompassed “all of the adjectives.”
“The last 12 months are so filled with a grief I’ve never experienced before,” said Sledge, who said she has lost family and friends to coronavirus. “I don’t sleep full nights. I get up and I pace one or two times a night. I wake up with panic attacks. A lot of them are related to the business. I used to have the temperament of a small business owner. Every day is putting out fires. You have a goal and a task list. I don’t react well to the chaos of anything anymore and everything feels like more chaos thrown in.”
There were moments during the past year when she thought about giving up.
“I have to keep telling myself to keep going and there are some days where it’s really, really hard,” she said. “Nobody has the answers to anything.”
Reasons for hope
Roper, though, has started to let himself feel hopeful again. He’s had some vendors trickle back in and has put together an order list for beer. He’s doing fix-up projects around the pub, painting a bit.
“The thing that gives us joy is making people happy and to not be able to do that, it makes us very sad,” he said.
Roper said he was gutted to call the principal of a local elementary school that his business adopted 14 years ago to say that, this year, there would be no check, no donation.
“I look forward to being able to be generous again,” he said. “I miss that. But it’s going to happen and when we’re back on our feet, we’ll be able to do those kinds of things again that make us happy.”
Just the other day, Roper looked outside Hopleaf’s window and saw Turgut, a 97-year-old Turkish man who has been a regular at the pub for years. Hopleaf stopped charging Turgut for drinks a long time ago.
“I ran outside,” Roper said. “I said, ‘Are you OK? Can I do anything for you?’ I just missed him so much. Fortunately, he is OK and when we’re open, we’re going to see him again real soon.”
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