Quarantine vs business in New York: how a Jewish restaurant in Brooklyn survives

Half of the 24 restaurants in New York may not reopen after the pandemic. One of them - Gertie - is trying to stay afloat so as not to join their ranks. The newspaper writes about what is being done for this. The New York Times.

Pandemic in New York

Nate Adler - Owner of a Jewish American Restaurant Gertie in Brooklyn. In March 2020, he planned to present a new menu and even hired a new sous chef. However, the coronavirus pandemic began.

The pandemic has forced many businesses to shut down. Within a few weeks, many New Yorkers had become infected with the virus. Therefore, Gertie's management decided to send almost all of its 25 employees on vacation.

Seven months later, Gertie is still running, although the business has been hit hard by the effects of the pandemic. Today, the establishment bears little resemblance to what it was before the lockdown: the coffee maker is off, a box of baked goods is gathering dust in the corner, and most of the employees are no longer working here.

Today this restaurant in Williamsburg is trying to stay afloat. For this, it performs different functions. In the mornings, it is a canteen where food is prepared for everyone who needs it; three times a week it is a restaurant that welcomes guests on the terrace; and on Thursdays there is a patio.

A year ago, Gertie was bringing in about $ 30 a week in profit. On the worst days of the pandemic, that amount was up to $ 50. Sales rose slowly in late summer and reached about $ 1000 a day.

“I feel like we've opened six restaurants in the last seven months alone,” said Flip Biddelman, 33, CEO and co-owner of the restaurant. "It was quite exhausting, emotionally and physically."

The owners are worried about what changes are coming with the onset of cold weather.

A blow to the restaurant business

The pandemic has hardly spared business in New York. But no industry has suffered as much as the restaurant business. This industry generated multi-billion dollar income for the city, making life in it dynamic and diverse, providing jobs for hundreds of thousands of people, including immigrants, and attracting millions of tourists every year.

From Michelin-starred restaurants to small establishments, the industry generated an estimated $ 46 billion annually, according to the state.

Today it is a great feat for a restaurant to simply remain open. There is no final tally of how many restaurants have gone out of business, but it is believed that the number is in the thousands.

At the height of the pandemic last spring, more than 200 restaurant workers were unemployed. Some have been rehired, but few are working the same hours as before the pandemic. Restaurant halls are open to the public, but with a 25% capacity limit.

By some estimates, the continuing devastation could eventually force up to half of the city's 24 restaurants to close.

The economy of running a restaurant in New York has never been good, but the pandemic has highlighted how volatile the business has been. Restaurants, even those located far from the upmarket districts of Manhattan, can pay more than $ 100 a year in rent and tens of thousands of dollars in other bills, including insurance policies that did not provide any help during the pandemic.

Many restaurant owners blame their landlords for not lowering their rent. But restaurant owners say they are also suffering, unable to pay the bills because tenants cannot pay their rent in full.

After the pandemic, landlord Gertie cut its base rent by 50% to $ 5000 a month. He also proposed extending the discount, which included a separate increase in rent based on a percentage of Gertie's sales, for another 16 months. Adler and Biddelman, who founded Gertie in February 2019, accepted the offer despite fears that the business would not improve significantly for several months.

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“Restaurants are designed to accommodate people, to feed them in a truly beautiful environment that has invested a lot of time and money,” said 31-year-old Adler. - Each restaurant has become a restaurant shell. Nothing is used the way it was supposed to be used, or the way it was originally intended, and it's hard to accept. "

Trying to stay afloat

Gertie has a hard time keeping afloat without all of his employees. Of the 25 employees, only 9 returned to work, the rest continue to receive unemployment benefits, since they work only a few hours a day.

Several former workers refused to return, citing health concerns, while others moved to another state and took new jobs.

Gertie opened in February 2019 at the corner of Marcy Avenue and Grand Street.

Adler and Biddelman have extensive experience with some of the city's most respected restaurant groups. Adler worked for the Union Square Hospitality Group, where Biddelman also worked. They also worked together at another restaurant in Manhattan.

Initially Gertie was not easy to take off. Breakfasts, lunches and weekend brunches were in demand, but dinners, which were supposed to be the most popular in this institution, went unnoticed.

The restaurant owners tried to find a way out of this situation. They even hired chefs to host pop-up events, commissioned artists and DJs to perform.

Then in February, management hired a new executive chef, 35-year-old Mike Cain, who worked at a Mediterranean restaurant on Brooklyn's waterfront.

But the virus changed their plans. On the first weekend of March, more than 300 people dined at Gertie. The following weekend, the number of visitors decreased to dozens of people daily. “I've seen people around me get nervous when people don't come,” said Eleanor Bellamy, 27, a former restaurant worker.

On March 15, the city ordered all bars and restaurants to close their lounges to visitors. It was only allowed to deliver food and cook for pickup. After her shift that night, Bellamy received a letter stating that most of the employees had been fired.

Like many others, Bellamy initially thought this was a temporary situation and decided to travel to her hometown of Durham, North Carolina. She took with her only the most necessary things.

Bellamy returned to New York in August, but this time to pack all of her belongings for a permanent move to North Carolina, where she took a job at a fabric and wallpaper company. “I stayed here longer and longer, and it felt like I was starting a whole new life,” Bellamy said. "It was the right choice for me."

Giovanni Luna, who worked as a bartender at Gertie, received exactly the same letter as Bellamy. Just six days earlier, he had been fired from another restaurant. “In the hospitality business, it’s not always the best job, but it’s something you always feel very confident about in New York,” said Luna, 31, who has been re-hired at Gertie but is receiving unemployment benefits. because few hours work.

That night, Kane dined at Sparrow Tavern, a favorite bar near his home in Astoria, Queens. There he ran into colleagues, and learned that their affairs were not going well either. “It was nice to see each other and make a little joke,” Kane said.

Way out of crisis

The week after the meeting, Kane, Adler and Biddelman drew up a new plan of action. So Gertie started to offer food delivery and assistance to frontline workers.

Delivery and pickup, meanwhile, were not in demand. There were few orders, and it was difficult to understand how much food should be kept in the warehouse so that it would not have time to disappear.

Adler and his partner Biddelman were associated with the LEE Initiative, a foundation in Louisville, Kentucky that provided emergency relief at the dawn of the pandemic. With the help of the foundation, Gertie's kitchen revived by hiring four workers back to hand out hundreds of meals a day to those in need.

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True, the restaurant worked in this format for only a few weeks. The staff were exhausted and worried about the risk of contracting the virus. Day after day, the restaurant workers came here to feed everyone in need, worrying about their own health, then they returned home, had dinner and went to bed, and in the morning everything was repeated.

In May, the restaurant partnered with City Harvest, a nonprofit that serves food to the hungry, and the Rethink Food group in another nutrition program. Rethink Food provides Gertie with food funding for $ 5 per lunch, and City Harvest picks up food four days a week.

In July, the restaurant began to welcome guests outdoors. The owners spent thousands of dollars to build a deck for tables and chairs. But this did not allow to “revive” the business. On its best days, the restaurant brought in about $ 2300, and on one weekend it raised up to $ 5000 in a few days.

Despite the fact that restaurants were allowed to return visitors to the 25-percent facility at the end of September, Gertie did not reopen due to concerns that both customers and staff could get sick.

Gertie is currently trying to cope with various initiatives. On the same day, the restaurant's chef prepares food for various programs, while preparing for the next outdoor event, including political meetings that take place here.

On Thursdays, Gertie invites chefs to help and create a pleasant atmosphere. “It's sobering when you spent so much time creating (a restaurant - Ed.), Wanting to make this place better than it was before,” Biddelman said. "I don't know if this is possible in this situation."