In the days before the reopening of St. Felix Hollywood, employees scrambled to yank plywood boards from windows, pry congealed syrup from clogged soda machines, scour dusty cooking equipment and scrub the kitchen floor.
“The last 24 hours have been insane,” co-owner John Arakaki said as he sifted through dozens of new safety rules and negotiated with his linen company, produce supplier and other vendors.
St. Felix welcomed customers back Feb. 5. It marked the fourth time in the last year that the restaurateur and a dozen or so of his employees scurried to reopen the Hollywood location and a sister restaurant in West Hollywood due mostly to local pandemic restrictions. Mr. Arakaki estimated it cost about $30,000 each time.
Nearly a year into the U.S. spread of Covid-19, multiple closings and reopenings are now almost commonplace for owners of restaurants, bars, gyms, beauty salons and other establishments grappling with shifting government directives as well as employee illnesses tied to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The uncertainty adds to the challenges facing small businesses, which often have limited cash cushions and big drops in sales due to the coronavirus. Eighty-eight percent of small firms said sales had not returned to normal, according to a survey fielded in September and October and released this month by the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks.
Nearly 39,000 businesses tracked by Yelp closed and then reopened more than once between March 1 and the end of last year, and more than 17,700 reopened three times or more. The Los Angeles metro area had the highest number of multiple closings, nearly 7,000 in all. The New York metro area, by comparison, had nearly 4,000 businesses reopen more than once.
Repeated closings and reopenings make it tough for small businesses to retain customers and employees. They are particularly painful for restaurants and brewpubs that must give away or toss out unused inventory and then restock. The latest U.S. government tally, released Feb. 5, showed that restaurants and bars have lost nearly 2.4 million jobs since the pandemic hit.
“Businesses are not getting used to it,” said Genevieve Morrill, chief executive of the West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. “Opening and closing. Opening and closing. This is a killer.”
Always on standby
Few areas of the country are being tested like southern California, where intensive-care unit capacity hit 0% in December. Since last March, Los Angeles and state officials have issued two orders prohibiting in-person dining and 16 other directives tied to Covid-19, according to The Hollywood Partnership, which manages the local business improvement district. Some restaurants also had to close because of Covid-19 cases among their workers. The 7-day testing positivity rate in Los Angeles County was 7.1% as of Feb. 10, down from a peak of more than 20% in early January.
Restaurant and small-business owners in the area say officials imposed restrictions with little warning and set rules that aren’t based on science. The California Restaurant Association sued Los Angeles County over a ban on outdoor dining imposed just before Thanksgiving. A judge said county officials failed “to weigh the benefits of an outdoor dining restriction against its costs.”
In late January, Los Angeles County health officials allowed restaurants to resume outdoor dining with new restrictions. The latest order increased minimum space between tables to 8 feet from 6 feet and instructed restaurants to tell customers that everyone sharing a table must be from the same household. It also prohibited televisions and other broadcast equipment, normally a big draw on Super Bowl Sunday.
Restaurant owners say the rules simply drive more people to gather at home, at underground parties or other places that don’t follow the safety regulations. They worry Covid-19 cases will climb again following last week’s Super Bowl gatherings, which could trigger yet another round of rule tightenings or shutdowns.
“You are almost on standby all the time,” said Mr. Arakaki, who shut down his two restaurants three times in response to Covid-19 directives and once, last summer, because of civil unrest. “During the periods you are allowed to open, you jump at the chance. You serve for three weeks and then shut down.”
Local officials defended their actions. Restaurant industry guidelines “are designed to lower the risk of Covid-19 exposure to restaurant workers and patrons” and must shift with varying levels of Covid-19 transmission, cases and hospitalizations, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Department of Public health said.
A California official said case rates, ICU admissions and other indicators are trending downward as a result of state actions and the commitment of residents. “When transmission rates rise, we have to reduce opportunities for transmission by closing down activities,” the spokesman for the California Health and Human Services Agency said. Gov. Gavin Newsom and the State Legislature in late November announced that $500 million would be made available to small businesses and nonprofits impacted by the pandemic.
In survival mode
Some restaurants remained shut in the face of uncertainty, while others pivoted to avoid closing down or become more cautious with each new directive. In Hollywood, 27% of restaurants and bars were closed in each of the past two quarters, according to The Hollywood Partnership. The group isn’t sure how many of them will reopen.
Wood & Vine, a New American restaurant and cocktail bar, did a bustling pre-theater business before the pandemic. The Hollywood restaurant has remained closed since Mr. Newsom issued a stay-at-home order in mid-March.
General manager Wally Moran came close to reopening three times, emailing staff their schedules. In June, he even put himself and four other furloughed workers back on payroll.
“Each time, the situation on the ground changed and we saw surges” in Covid-19 cases, said Mr. Moran, adding that his top priority is the safety of his staff and guests. “We are a place where you go to forget your troubles, to have a celebration,” he said. “If we can, I would like to open when our guests feel more comfortable coming.”
Takeout and delivery doesn’t make financial sense for the decade-old restaurant, said Mr. Moran, who now expects to reopen sometime in the next two months. He still drops by Wood & Vine two or three times most weeks to check the premises, read the mail and recertify himself and his staff for unemployment benefits.
Roughly half of Wood & Vine’s 31-person staff left Los Angeles, said Mr. Moran, with many returning home to live with their parents to save money. Others have found new jobs or continue to collect unemployment benefits.
Kristian Proano worked at Wood & Vine as an expediter before the shutdown, overseeing the flow of orders from kitchen to table. Mr. Proano nearly took a position at another restaurant several times, but decided not to because he fears that another restaurant closure would force him to reapply for unemployment benefits.
“It feels like you are gambling with your money,” he said.
At some restaurants, workers toggle between roles as tasks shift in response to changing directives. Mr. Proano’s wife, Tory LeClair, worked as a server for most of the past decade. In the last year, she bagged groceries and delivered them to cars, trained other employees, answered phones, helped customers order online and served patrons at indoor and outdoor tables. Some weeks she worked five days; others, not at all.
“Whatever they threw at me, I was willing to learn it as quickly as possible,” she said. “I was truly in a survival mode.”
The cost of closing
Some restaurant owners found creative ways to remain open. In March, Francesco Zimone, owner of L’antica Pizzeria da Michele in Los Angeles, turned his restaurant into a grocery, cooked meals for local hospitals and offered to-go pizza kits and pizza-making lessons on Zoom with his chef. The restaurant closed for one day, in June, in response to civil unrest.
After the second Covid-related ban on in-person dining was announced in late November, Mr. Zimone spent $4,000 on a projector, lights and big screen and turned his parking lot into a drive-in showing independent films at no charge to customers picking up pizza or groceries. He continues to operate the drive-in even after reopening for outdoor dining on two patios that currently seat 80.
Adding movies didn’t bring the restaurant “even close to break even,” said Mr. Zimone, 47, who cashed in his 401(k) retirement account to open the pizzeria in 2019. “It just saves the day a little bit,” he said. “The cost of closing is higher than the cost of staying open.”
Restaurant owners complain they get little advance warning of closures, making it difficult to prepare. When Blue Palms Brewhouse closed in March and again in November, owner Brian Lenzo gave away roughly $8,000 of perishable food and invited employees to stop by once a week to fill up growlers, milk jugs or other containers with craft beer that would otherwise go bad.
Mr. Lenzo experimented with carryout, but said it wasn’t profitable. He pulled the plug on outdoor dining after witnessing a knife fight between two homeless people about 20 feet from his Hollywood restaurant while dining with his wife and children on a summer Saturday.
“We’re not opening again until there is indoor dining,” said Mr. Lenzo, who found some employees jobs at three other breweries where he is a partner.
Karim Megji, owner of The Gallery Restaurant and Wood & Water, both in Los Angeles, gave away thousands of dollars of food to employees and friends in March and tossed out hundreds of oysters that couldn’t keep. Determined not to have a repeat, he began promoting a Thanksgiving dine-at-home menu after hearing rumblings that another ban on in-person dining might be issued in late November. When that ban came through just before the holiday, the restaurants quickly offered customers with reservations the option of a takeout turkey or prime rib dinner.
“The 50 turkeys we bought don’t go into the freezer,” Mr. Megli said.
A ‘Rubik’s Cube’
The options can vary with the type of restaurant and its location. Cary Mosier shut all seven of his restaurants in April and reopened them in June. When Los Angeles County halted outdoor dining in November, he refocused his five casual Cafe Gratitude locations on takeout and delivery and added cookie kits and other products he could ship.
Mr. Mosier tried unsuccessfully to keep open his more upscale Gracias Madre location in West Hollywood, offering a happy hour special with discounted food and beverage delivery, but shut it down after a few weeks. A second Gracias Madre location in Orange County remained open because that county had fewer restrictions.
Running restaurants is now “a bit of a Rubik’s Cube,” said Mr. Mosier, who reopened his casual cafes in late January. The currently closed Gracias Madre location, on the other hand, won’t reopen until March 1. Its chef is in the Midwest; the general manager is in Florida.
“Right now, my kitchens are turned off,” said Mr. Mosier. “I have to find the bartender, take inventory and negotiate with suppliers about putting us on C.O.D.”
Mr. Mosier said he is in less of a hurry to reopen this time and is bracing for additional changes in Covid policies. “The rug has been pulled out from under us in terms of shifting laws,” he said. “I don’t know if it will get better or worse, but they are going to change.”
At the reopened St. Felix, menu offerings are more limited and lean heavily to comfort food. Macaroni and cheese, blackened chicken fettuccine and American Wagyu beef sliders made the cut. Wild-caught salmon, another popular menu item, remains off the menu because it is too costly to toss if there is another sudden shutdown.
St. Felix sold out the Friday and Saturday it reopened, but served just a handful of diners on Super Bowl Sunday, as local residents gathered in their homes rather than at restaurants without television screens.
Mr. Arakaki, the co-owner, remains nervous and cautious about the pace of reopening. “We will keep it tight and then expand as we get more confidence closer to the summer,” he said. “I don’t trust or have faith that there is not going to be another shutdown.”