BUZZ

+ SKY HIGH

+ CENSUS 2020

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CLOSED TO THE PUBLICLocal restaurants are getting creative in their approaches to business during the coronavirus pandemic—but they need your support. By Jane Porter

MAGAZINE

AS SEEN INAPRIL 2020

APRIL 2020 | 17 16 | RALEIGH MAGAZINE | raleighmag.com

BUZZ

ON A TUESDAY MORNING in March, Christopher Edwards, a server at STIR in North Hills, stood outside at the corner of Glenwood Avenue and Lead Mine Road, wearing a pressed shirt and tie and holding a sign.

“WAITER, RESTAURANT CLOSED,” the sign stated. And, in smaller letters underneath: “Trying to buy asthma inhaler.”

Edwards says he’s been busking to supple-ment his income, playing his electric guitar out-side of grocery stores to try to raise some cash.

“It’s a way I can keep some integrity,” he says. “Maybe people buying food will see, this is a per-son who has needs too, who doesn’t have emer-gency funds or a reliable source of income. That is all I can think to do, I can busk until the job market lets up. Right now, I don’t know where else I can find a job.”

Edwards has applied for unemployment benefits, he says, but the state’s website keeps crashing out due to the volume of applicants. It’s

not clear how long he—and thousands of other bar and restaurant workers in Raleigh who have been laid off due to closed dining rooms and services limited to pickup and delivery—will be out of work, even as grocery stores scramble to keep their shelves stocked with food and essen-tial goods.

“Fifty percent of all food consumed in North Carolina is consumed in restaurants,” said Lynn Minges, the president and CEO of the North Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association on the local NC Food and Beverage podcast last month. In Wake County, the hospitality industry represents more than 67,000 local jobs, accord-ing to the Greater Raleigh Convention and Vis-itors Bureau (Visit Raleigh).

“Restaurants will play a big role in solving the food crisis in the long term,” Minges added. “Restaurants may have to shift their thinking to creating foods that may not be on their menu, like trays of lasagna, to serving the public in bulk.”

Local restaurants began shifting their thinking almost immediately, once it was clear the COVID-19 coronavirus was going to be a crisis that would stick around for a while. In-deed, they’ve been forced to, as Gov. Roy Coo-per issued an executive order for all North Car-olina bars and restaurants to close their dining rooms in mid-March while his administration worked to expand unemployment insurance benefits for service industry workers and others affected. A week later, the state’s Department of Health and Human Services announced mea-sures to prohibit outdoor seating on restau-rants’ patios as well as indoors.

Instead of shutting completely (which some Raleigh restaurants have done, includ-ing The Oak, Vidrio, Rosewater and Death and Taxes) many have pivoted to providing curbside takeout and delivery services. The City of Ra-leigh suspended its parking rules for curbside pickup and created a map linked on its website to show where curbside pickup zones are locat-ed across town.

Some restaurants are following Minges’ suggestion and offering pre-made dishes in bulk that will keep well and that customers can make several meals out of.

The Player’s Retreat, for instance, is pre-paring food and soups available for purchase in quarts or pints, to be frozen or warmed at home.

But it quickly became clear that, for many restaurants and bars, takeout and delivery for a prolonged period—especially without alcohol sales to drive up sales margins—wasn’t going to be enough.

They’ve had to get really creative.Last month, Drew Schenck and Kevin

Barrett, owners of the cocktail bar Dram & Draught, converted their space on the ground floor of One Glenwood into a pop-up grocery store, Dram Grog and Grocery. The full-service market will be open daily from 2 to 8 p.m., sell-ing wine, growlers and cases of beer, toilet pa-per, produce, ground meat, canned goods and other products at minimally marked-up prices. Shoppers will be limited to four at a time and the grocery will deliver to seniors living within five miles of One Glenwood once a day.

“We want to help people with their basic needs and really support the Boylan neighbor-hood,” said Barrett. “This is a food desert in this area. We want to help the neighborhood and try to keep some of our employees working.”

Restaurateur Niall Hanley’s Morgan Street Food Hall is also doing its part to help service industry employees, as well as the communi-ty at large, during the pandemic. Hanley has waived rent for all of his tenants and the food hall hosted a blood drive through March, where folks who donated blood received a $20 gift card to use at any of the Morgan Street Food Hall restaurants. Additionally, Hanley’s Hi-bernian Hospitality Group partnered with US Foods to package and distribute food care pack-ages for local hospitality workers, available for them to pick up on the food hall’s patio.

It’s not just bar and restaurant workers that are suffering.

According to numbers from Visit Raleigh, the hotel occupancy rate for the week of March 8-14 clocked in at 54.7 percent, a 25.2 percent decline from the same week’s rate last year of 76.8 percent. The Umstead Hotel and Spa laid off 300 workers and, with more than 50 events and fes-tivals cancelled or postponed, more layoffs are likely to come.

With more than 18,000 North Carolinians having filed for unem-ployment insurance by late March, state officials have scrambled to make it easier for people to quali-fy for benefits and to make unem-ployment less costly to businesses. In an executive order, Gov. Cooper eased restrictions on who can ap-ply, including people who haven’t lost their jobs entirely but have seen their hours reduced. He also lifted the weeklong waiting period for benefits and the requirement that people be actively searching for a new job while collecting benefits. Businesses af-fected by the coronavirus won’t be required to help supplement their workers’ unemployment benefits and the administration and state law-makers are looking for other ways to ease the burden on workers and businesses.

Private sector initiatives, too, are popping up to help support service and hospitality in-dustry workers.

Celebrated Raleigh chef Ashley Christensen announced the creation of the Triangle Workers Relief Fund, administered by the Frankie Lem-mon School, to raise donations for cooks, serv-ers, bartenders, dishwashers and other restaurant industry workers whose jobs have been impacted

by the coronavirus. In the first 24 hours of the fund’s website going live, 3,200 workers regis-tered to apply for financial assistance.

And Let’s Get Offline, which connects its subscribers to restaurant industry events all over the Triangle, launched Take Out for the Triangle. Its members can receive a $5 credit to their monthly subscriptions for ordering take-out from one of Offline’s 40 restaurant partners by texting a photo of their takeout receipt.

As bad as the reduced hours, limited ser-vices, closings and layoffs are right now—not to mention the social isolation we’re all expe-riencing—what’s worse is the uncertainty, the unknown length of time that it will take before

things return to normal. It could be months be-fore restaurants are allowed to reopen their din-ing rooms again; it’s likely that we’ll see some of our beloved local businesses forced to shut their doors for good.

All each of us can do right now is to sup-port the restaurants and other small businesses in our community in the ways we can: Order takeout. Buy gift cards. Donate to the Triangle Workers Relief Fund. Lobby state representa-tives and those in Washington to pass measures that will assist struggling families.

This pandemic will pass, as all crises do. But there’s no telling what kind of shape Raleigh will be in once it’s over. ■

Curbside sign at Relish Craft Kitchen & Bourbon Bar.

Hand sanitizer for sale at Relish Craft Kitchen & Bourbon Bar.

Delivery and Curbside options atDank Burrito at Transfer Co.

Pop-up grocery at Dram & Draught.