🔒Winter could represent ‘mass extinction event’ for CT restaurant industry

The coronavirus pandemic has forced all restaurants to change the way they do business, requiring them to do whatever it takes to survive.

For example, Max Downtown is putting on farm dinners in Simsbury, while chefs at Millwrights are cooking out of a food truck while servers bring dishes to outdoor tables.

But everywhere across Connecticut’s restaurant industry, a bitter winter looms in the not-too-distant future, raising fears that an already battered sector is going to face a further shake-out once it’s too cold to host guests outdoors, where many diners prefer to sit to lessen the potential spread of the virus.

“The reckoning is going to happen when it gets cold outside,” said chef Tyler Anderson, co-owner of Tanda Hospitality, which owns about a half-dozen Connecticut restaurants, including Millwrights in Simsbury. “I think you’re going to see restaurants as a whole have a very disastrous winter.”

Following a complete shutdown of the dine-in restaurant industry when COVID-19 began infecting residents and spreading nationwide, Connecticut eateries began a slow reopening process about 12 weeks ago. Constitution State restaurants may now offer outdoor dining, or indoor dining at 50% capacity.

In recent months, restaurants have been pumping up their takeout operations, spending money to set up and break down outdoor tables and chairs each day, and figuring out new ways to offer customers an enjoyable dining experience, while still following health-and-safety guidelines, said Scott Dolch, executive director of the Connecticut Restaurant Association (CRA).

Dolch, Anderson and others in Connecticut’s restaurant industry are in the thick of making things work in a near-impossible situation, even experimenting with innovations that could outlive the pandemic.

But with a COVID-19 vaccine likely not coming until sometime in 2021, and the threat of the disease lasting at least until then, eventually it will be too cold to eat outside, dealing another devastating blow to a beleaguered industry. And nobody has a solution.

“It scares me … how many more [restaurants] might not make it, and how hard this could be for our industry” Dolch said. “I lose sleep every night.”

Sympathetic ear

Dolch’s days usually begin with a conference call with CRA members, and the rest of his time is divided between working with the state Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) on regulations, advising lawmakers on the state and national level on which policies could best help Connecticut’s restaurant industry and serving as a sympathetic ear for local restaurateurs barely hanging on.

“Sometimes it’s just a venting session,” Dolch said of conversations with restaurant owners. “Sometimes it’s an owner calling me who’s an emotional wreck and can’t talk to their wife, or can’t talk to their friends.”

Connecticut restaurants have largely cooperated with state-imposed health-and-safety measures that require increased sanitization, and limit the number of customers they can serve, Dolch said. That might be partly because COVID-19 hit Connecticut — along with other Northeast states — hard in April, leading business owners to take the threat more seriously.

It also helps that Dolch says he’s found a good partner in DECD Commissioner David Lehman. The two speak on a regular basis, said Dolch, who provides Lehman an on-the-ground picture of the issues restaurant owners are running into, and how they could be solved. Dolch has also been pushing to expand the number of seats restaurants can fill indoors.

In addition to the open door at DECD, Dolch periodically meets with U.S. Sens. Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal to advise them on what Connecticut restaurants need from the federal government, and is always checking in with his National Restaurant Association counterparts in other states to further develop best practices for business during the pandemic.

The industry, for example, was very active in lobbying for changes to the federal forgivable loan Paycheck Protection Program, to make it more useful to restaurants.

Since Gov. Ned Lamont first mandated in mid-March that eateries in the state close down all but takeout and delivery service, the state has rolled back some restrictions. Connecticut now allows restaurants to host socially distanced outdoor dining and indoor dining at 50% capacity. That’s led to outside-the-box thinking.

Millwrights, for example, spent about $25,000 buying tables, chairs and other supplies necessary to offer outdoor dining, Anderson said. The restaurant also bought a food truck that serves as a kitchen for outdoor dining, since it’s a long walk for servers and food runners from the indoor kitchen to outdoor tables. Additionally, Anderson is using the truck as a new concept for Tanda’s catering service, which has lost about $1 million in revenue since the pandemic began.

“We’ve created a catering company that can basically do whatever, wherever, however,” Anderson said of the small-scale catering venture, which promotes flexibility in venue and cuisine as a key selling point. “If you want to have a wedding on top of Mount Washington, we can do it.”

Hartford’s Max Downtown, the flagship eatery of Max Restaurant Group, hasn’t opened its doors since restaurants shuttered dine-in operations in the spring, and will remain closed until after Labor Day, said Steve Abrams, a partner in the restaurant group. That’s not to say Max Downtown has lost all its business.

On Fridays and some Saturdays, people seeking plates off Max Downtown’s menu can attend “farm dinners” at Rosedale Farms & Vineyards in Simsbury, Abrams said. Additionally, other Max Restaurant Group eateries are open, including Trumbull Kitchen and Max Tavern, which has been seeing some success with a $65 four-course tasting menu, which pairs cocktails with dishes.

“A lot of these things that we do are trial and error … but this is a real hit,” Abrams said, noting that the tasting menu will probably continue after the pandemic.

But when it comes to the winter, there are few ideas for how to keep revenue flowing when weather and logistics make outdoor dining challenging to impossible. And restaurateurs are grappling with that looming question without any solid answers, Abrams said.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen come fall,” Abrams said. “We know one thing: People aren’t going to want to sit outside, … all the restaurateurs are pretty nervous about that.”

Historic threat

In a worst-case scenario, Max Restaurant Group could weather a situation in which restaurants had to be shuttered for the winter season, Abrams said. Anderson is playing with the idea of building heated igloos at Millwrights so outdoor dining can resume.

But therein lies the problem for most restaurants, said Heather Lalley, an editor for trade publication Restaurant Business. The few options for offering cold-weather outdoor dining are expensive, and the restaurants most in need of revenue don’t have the money to make it happen.

“The unfortunate thing is it’s the mom-and-pop [restaurants] that have definitely seen the bulk of this impact throughout this crisis,” Lalley said. “It’s those guys who we’re going to see go away, and potentially not come back.”

Analysts have predicted up to 30% of U.S. restaurants could close for good by winter’s end, and the Independent Restaurant Coalition (IRC) — which lobbies Congress on behalf of independent restaurants — said 85% of non-chain eateries could go out of business by the end of the year.

Independent restaurants account for more than three-quarters of restaurants nationwide, according to IRC, and in 2018 the industry employed more than 160,000 in Connecticut, or about 9% of the state’s workforce, according to the CRA.

There’s not a whole lot these restaurants can do to avoid a harsh reality this winter, said Aaron Allen, chief strategist and founder of global restaurant industry consulting firm Aaron Allen & Associates.

“Essentially this [situation] favors those who have the cash and credit to make changes,” Allen said, noting that for many who don’t, “it’s a fatal blow.”

Lalley agrees, and said this winter could represent a mass extinction event in the U.S. restaurant industry.

“This is unprecedented in modern days,” Lalley said. “It’s going to have wide-ranging ripple effects for years and years to come.”