Columbus Monthly May 2020

Dining industry

Fighting for Survival What the pandemic means for our local restaurants and bars, as well as the people that make them run

By Jill Moorhead

A Daily Roller Coaster Bermudez is unsure about his future. He 122

Harvest Pizzeria in Bexley has closed indefinitely.

and the mother of his children are living separately, but he acknowledges that if things get desperate enough, they may be forced to cohabitate. “I’m betting that I have to find a new vocation. [My situation] changes hour by hour. I don’t know what day it is. Sundays are Thursdays.”

Time is off for Christine Deye, the head of brand integrity at A&R Creative Group, as well. “The last 14 days have been two-anda-half years,” she says. Deye spent two weeks creating daily plans, only to abandon them every time.

A&R felt the impact of the coronavirus pandemic early, after Ohio State University president Michael Drake’s March 12 announcement that the university would extend spring break and move to online

learning. The restaurant group also runs Trism, Ethyl & Tank and Midway on High, all located near the Ohio Union. “Our Campus business was down 75 percent,” Deye says.

“We started thinking about what it would look like if we had to reduce staff and hours.

I was building a cash flow model.” In the period immediately following DeWine’s March 15 announcement, the restaurant group tried to make takeout and delivery work.

“It was really weighing on [owners] Ali and Abed [Alshahal] that we were putting the safety of our team at risk. [Carryout] was a lot of work for only a little money. We were covering the costs, but not much more.”

On March 21, A&R shut all of its restaurants down. (The Market Italian Village has since regrouped to offer Market Boxes, containing

photo: tim johnson

Carlos Bermudez, a bartender at The Light of Seven Matchsticks, was at work listening to Mike DeWine’s March 15 press conference when the governor made the announcement: In order to flatten the COVID-19 curve, all bars and restaurants must close as of 9 p.m. that evening, with exceptions for food delivery and carryout. Bermudez wasn’t surprised but describes the aftermath of Ohio’s dine-in ban in one word: “brutal.”

Bermudez, a single father of two boys, has since been laid off, losing 80 percent of his income when the bar closed indefinitely.

He’s helped the speakeasy’s sister business in Worthington, Natalie’s Coal-Fired Pizza & Live Music, with takeout and delivery, but it’s not enough. “With a couple of mouths to feed, it’s serious business every day,” he says. “[The kids have] have seen me break down a couple times.”

The day of DeWine’s announcement, roughly 4,045 Franklin County restaurants (representing 83,373 employees, according to a 2017 Bureau of Labor Statistics report) had less than seven hours to make a decision: switch to carryout and delivery or shut their doors for the foreseeable future.

Four days later, Cameron Mitchell Restaurants closed all 36 of its restaurants across 12 states, furloughing 4,500 workers plus another 1,300 from Rusty Bucket Restaurant and Tavern’s 23 locations. The next day, Grow Restaurants closed six eateries, displacing 180 associates. And the following day, A&R Creative Group shuttered 11 restaurants, laying off 320 employees.

According to a statewide poll of members from March 22 to 24, the Ohio Restaurant Association found that 47 percent of Ohio restaurants had closed their doors indefinitely, making the difficult decision to wait out the pandemic rather than give carryout and delivery a go.

Columbus Monthly MAY 2020

121_131_DINING_MAY_CM_CR.indd 122

4/9/20 5:14 PM