A tough winter ahead: Kansas City bars, restaurants fear mass closures as COVID rages
After struggling for eight months, Kansas City restaurants were hoping to make up for some lost sales during the peak holiday season.
Instead, they face more local government restrictions on hours and capacity because of record surges of COVID-19 cases.
And as the days grow colder, many will lose patio seating, one of the few options that helped them survive.
“We’re entering a period of time where the virus is getting bad and we can’t use our patios. So a lot of customers frankly are not willing to come in the door,” said Scott Anderson, co-founder of Riley Drive Entertainment, which operates Saints Pub + Patio locations in Lenexa and Independence.
Since shelter-in-place orders were made in mid-March, local restaurant owners have responded in a variety of ways.
Many have reinvented their operations for the short-term — concentrating on curbside pickup, selling groceries, offering family-sized packages, opening ghost kitchens for delivery only, and putting ingredients together to make it easier for home cooks. Those changes may live on beyond the pandemic.
Some, like the west side’s Fox and Pearl, remade their parking lots into al fresco dining areas.
Other operators have shut down locations or closed their doors through the New Year or until a vaccine is widely available.
More than four dozen area restaurants have closed permanently. And industry insiders expect more closures in the coming weeks as restaurants face the most challenging winter in recent history.
“I think it’s going to be a restaurant bloodbath over the next five months,” Anderson said.
Starting Friday, Kansas City restaurants and bars had to cut capacity by half, space out parties and close by 10 p.m. Almost every surrounding county imposed similar restrictions. Johnson County has no capacity restrictions and imposed a midnight closing time.
For Anderson’s restaurants, the capacity restriction isn’t a huge deal, with many people still avoiding indoor dining. But he said the limitations on hours may push more diners into restaurants during the times they are allowed to be open.
He understands that public officials want to halt large, late-night gatherings. But he said his restaurants generally have 20 or so people eating and drinking late at night. It’s not the largest part of his business, but it makes a difference.
“Right now every customer, every dollar in the door matters,” he said.
The pandemic hasn’t hit all restaurants equally: Many fast-food outlets with drive-thrus and places that excel in takeout — like Chinese or pizza joints — are staying busy. But that’s not the case for big restaurants that center on dine-in customers.
“We lose a restaurant or two every day it seems like,” said Bill Teel, executive director of the Greater Kansas City Restaurant Association. “And we’ll continue to do so until we have a real turnaround and a real opening up of the economy.”
The current environment particularly threatens independent restaurants. Neighborhood diners or bars, even some of the metro’s most beloved barbecue joints, face the greatest risk of closure, he said.
“Any restaurant that’s not part of a chain or a large group. So the Longhorn Steakhouses are going to be fine,” Teel said. “I don’t want to see Kansas City become a chain restaurant city again. That’s why I worry so much about the independent restaurants.”
Reinventing to survive
Restaurateur Jo Marie Scaglia was savoring 15 years of growth and expansion when the COVID-19 crisis hit and sales at her four locations immediately plummeted by 90 percent.
She had to lay off 70% of her staff and close her decade-old downtown location of The Mixx after losing the office traffic that kept it humming before the pandemic.
“The goal was to survive,” she said. “Then it was, how do we thrive?”
Scaglia reinvented the operation of her three other restaurants to appeal more to consumers who prefer to eat at home during the pandemic.
On Thursday, a truck pulled up to her Caffetteria Modern Cafe & Marketplace in Prairie Village, dropping off cases of to-go cartons.
A steady stream of traffic arrived as cars found designated spaces for curbside to-go, customers came in to peruse the offerings and some sat down to eat. Stickers marked sanitized tables and customers were asked to put their used plates in a bin when they were finished.
Her staff fills the prepared food coolers several times a day with ready-to-eat items. Scaglia also is rolling out the markets in her The Mixx restaurants just south of the Country Club Plaza and in Overland Park.
“COVID brought me three new businesses: a grocery store, prepared foods operation and cocktail business,” she said. “And this will be the business model going forward. If the industry recovers in one year I will be amazed, in two years I will be surprised.”
Even with closures mounting, some restaurateurs see opportunities in the changing marketplace.
Locally owned Hawaiian Bros Island Grill is expanding with locations planned for Independence, Shawnee and Ward Parkway Center. It plans a new kitchen design that will have two double-sided production lines — one for dine-in orders, the other for to-go and deliveries.
President Scott Ford said to-go and delivery orders have doubled during COVID.
The first area Fajita Pete’s is scheduled to open in Overland Park in early 2021, with another set to open next year in Brookside or Lenexa.
Area franchisee Scott Keen said catering orders are up as businesses, hospitals and schools place orders so their employees don’t have to leave work. Its biggest change is in packaging: before the pandemic, it delivered heaping pans of food with tongs so customers could serve themselves. Now, everything is individually packaged.
“Since 2008 this concept was designed for delivery and catering,” Keen said. “So we are positioned well.”
In late October, The Town Company opened in Hotel Kansas City, the latest development from Patrick Ryan of Port Fonda in Westport.
“The numbers are exceeding expectations but our biggest challenge is the hotel’s occupancy because people aren’t traveling as much,” Ryan said.
The hotel plans staycation promotions for the holidays that allow guests to drink in the lobby and dine in their rooms. The hotel has also installed plastic igloos on the roof that can seat up to 10 people for cocktails and small plates.
“People like to be out, they like to be served, they like to be cooked for. They like the experience,” Ryan said. “So The Town Company has great plans to continue the experience.”
Delayed openings, ‘waves of closings’
For a couple of weeks in June, Ryan tried to-go at Port Fonda.
“But it got to the point where we were wearing, like, hazmat suits and opening trunks of cars,” Ryan said. “But that’s not why I do what I do. I like the interactions and seeing people smile. So I wasn’t digging it.”
Port Fonda was one of the first area restaurants to shut down temporarily until the COVID-19 crisis was under control. He expected to be closed for a few weeks, not eight months.
He’s grateful that his landlord worked with him on rent and he hopes to reopen in mid-April — if restrictions on dining room occupancy are lifted.
“I think we are going to see waves of closings in early 2021,” he said.
In April, Gojo Japanese Steak House put a sign on the door saying it would close until the pandemic was over. But on Thursday, the company announced it would close permanently after more than 40 years at its spot between the Country Club Plaza and Westport.
Rather than serve customers at tables, Gojo plans to focus on bottling sauces and dressings to sell in grocery stores.
In Westport, consumers could have been celebrating the holidays at a new live music venue with Southern-inspired cuisine. Instead, work on the space stopped months ago and plywood is plastered over the front facade of the prominent space.
A mid-century gas station on high-traffic Metcalf was on track to finish a major remodeling and reopen as a coffee shop. But the Topeka-based owners haven’t even started work and don’t plan to for months.
Those are just two of the new restaurants, bars, breweries and coffee shops that had been scheduled to open this year with hundreds of new jobs — all now on pause.
PT’s Coffee Roasting Co.’s co-founder and partner, Fred Polzin, said his area shops are down 40% to 45% since mid-March, compared to the same period in 2019. So the company’s plans to turn a mid-century gas station on Metcalf into a PT’s are on hold.
Even in good times, new coffee shops also don’t see the same immediate surge as new restaurants, he said. Coffee drinkers are already getting their coffee at another place, so new coffee shops have to convert them.
“So it is a slow build,” he said. “We are just waiting for things to be more normal.”
Shutting down for winter
On Monday, Westport Ale House announced that it would close its doors until early 2021.
“It was obviously a tough decision,” said Scott Mars, president of Trident Investment Group, which owns the bar.
Mars said he was “100% confident” that Westport Ale House will reopen next year. It’s among the city’s most popular bars, the kind of place that generally packs in partiers until last call on Fridays and Saturdays.
He thinks those crowds will return once the virus has quelled. But he said smaller restaurants and bars won’t be so lucky.
“I do believe there will be a tsunami or wave of additional bar and restaurant closures in Kansas City because of the additional restrictions,” he said. “A lot of these places were on life support anyways.”
Nearby Beer Kitchen also closed its doors earlier this month with plans to reopen sometime in the spring.
Mars said he understands government officials are doing their best to slow the spread of the virus. But he said closing bars at 10 p.m. will probably push people to start drinking earlier in the day. And he said his company elected to close down and regroup rather than try to police potentially large groups coming in before the city-imposed curfew.
He said businesses are in a no-win situation, trying carefully to balance public health with the economic health of their companies and employees. With expanded unemployment benefits and federal small business loans now exhausted, he said employees will pay the price for business closures.
And this new round of restrictions comes at the worst time of year. Bars and restaurants generally do well in December with holiday gatherings. Revenues during the last month of the year help keep businesses afloat in historically slow periods like January and February. Now, most will lose not just holiday business, but the option of hosting guests outdoors now that colder temperatures are on the way.
“What you have is this kind of double-edged sword of greater restrictions and slower months,” Mars said. “You’re adding insult to injury going into January and February.”
Trident is developing new restaurants in Midtown and the Crossroads Arts District. But Mars said the company wouldn’t open them until the pandemic is under control enough that local restrictions are eased.
“I wouldn’t open anything in this environment,” he said.
This story was originally published November 20, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
