KC restaurants gear up for reopening that won’t be so grand: half-full dining rooms
Weeks after going to a carry-out and delivery-only operation during the shelter-in-place order, Westport Flea Market is prepping for the time when the order is lifted. And that means a lot less seating.
Owner Joe Zwillenberg recently had employees move more than half the tables and chairs — seating for about 80 people— to event spaces in back.
“I want to be prepared so that when they say we can go we are ready to open,” Zwillenberg said. “In the beginning people are going to be cognizant about being too close to other people.”
Kansas City extended its stay-at-home order until May 15 as the metro — and the nation — balances between employee and consumer safety versus economic survival.
But once the order is lifted it will ultimately be up to the consumer to decide. How long will it be until they are comfortable dining out again?
U.S. restaurant customer transactions dropped 41 percent in the week ending April 5 compared to a year ago, following a 42 percent decline the prior week ending March 29, which may indicate the industry is bottoming out, according to market researchers The NPD Group.
The pressure is on to reopen and recoup some of those lost sales, but also to reopen safely.
Restaurants are already held to high safety standards with frequent inspections from health department officials. Now they also must add protections for employees and their dine-in customers to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
That could mean monitoring employee health with temperature checks at the beginning of a shift, servers wearing gloves and face masks, disposable menus or ones that can be easily sanitized, plastic partitions between tables, contactless transactions (including credit cards over cash), and continually disinfecting in high-traffic areas.
Just before the shelter-in-place order, Westport Flea Market made some tweaks to its condiment station. Bottles of ketchup and mustard were switched for single serve packages. Bowls of freshly sliced lettuce, tomatoes and onions were replaced by prepackaged servings.
Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue with five area locations has already started taking employee temperatures, and the workers use face masks and gloves for curbside pickup and deliveries.
The barbecue said they will follow the guidance of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health officials when reopening the dining rooms. That could mean shielding customers with movable plexiglas barriers, and reconfiguring the dining rooms to allow more space between tables.
Reservations will help the barbecue properly time the flow of customers, said Fiorella’s CEO Case Dorman.
Some experts also are recommending bringing in customers through one door and having them leave through another to avoid face-to-face contact.
Brookside Poultry chef and owner Charles d’Ablaing was in the process of relocating and expanding with a second restaurant just a few blocks east when the pandemic crisis hit. He’s offering carry-out at the current location and now plans to relocate in mid-to-late May.
d’Ablaing said he’s making about as much as during the same period in 2019 so he can carry on with mostly carry-out for a while. By mid-June he hopes more people will be able to dine-in.
“I believe that for the foreseeable future the face of dining will change,” he said. “We should be able to get back to normal in the next year, so my plans will remain the same until the general public feels better about being close to other people.”
Starbucks plans to reopen its cafes in “monitor and adapt” phases, much like it did in China. Some locations will reopen for just drive-thru (more than 60 percent of its U.S. cafes have a drive-thru lane), and others for to-go orders.
Trends that popped up during the pandemic are expected to continue. Delivery, which was already accelerating, has surged during the stay-at-home orders. Some restaurants also plan to continue to offer grocery items such as meat by the pound.
Industry trade publication Nation’s Restaurant News said the focus will be on value “with a capital ‘V,’” perhaps with well-priced creative cocktails. But some consumers, who might have had to curtail travel plans and special outings, might want to treat themselves to small indulgences.
Going forward restaurateurs also have to be prepared for another temporary shutdown if COVID-19 cases surge again.
And if consumers’ economic situations worsen with rising unemployment, furloughs and cuts in pay, restaurant sales could continue to decline, according to the NPD Group.
Farina and Extra Virgin in the Crossroads temporarily closed in mid-March, expecting the shutdown to last only two to four weeks. Chef and owner Michael Smith said his customers like the experience of dining in the restaurants, and seeing him and his wife, Nancy, and their team.
At Farina the tables are already spread out, he said, but at Extra Virgin some seating will have to be blocked off.
“We haven’t formulated a plan; we just know it is going to look different,” Smith said. “When everything is up in two or three weeks, maybe a month, everyone is going to be out. There will be real uptick because of the pent-up demand. Then we think it will die off pretty significantly because people are broke.”
This story was originally published April 23, 2020 at 12:17 PM.