First, the good news.
For now at least, the worst of the economic storm that has pummeled restaurants in Hampton Roads over the past year has likely subsided. Nearly half of Virginia has gotten a swift vaccine shot to the arm, the springtime sun is shining on hundreds of new patios, and a new round of CARES Act funding is waiting (perhaps too patiently) in the wings.
And this spring, an entire generation of diners has returned to restaurants and breweries, after being early in line to receive their vaccines.
“The average age of goer-outers has gone up two decades over the past two months,” said Antonio Caruana, chef-owner of downtown Norfolk’s Luce Italian restaurant. “That vulnerable generation of people we were all trying to protect, they’re now the ones coming out drinking and eating. They’re out there living their lives.”
Other local restaurateurs have echoed this experience. Meanwhile, statistics kept by reservation site OpenTable show that the volume of restaurant reservations — a strong marker for upscale dining demand — is on an upswing so steep it looks like the far side of a half-pipe. Hiring ads nationwide have also boomed.
“Nationally, online job ads in March 2021 reached 2.75 million, a level not seen since January 2020,” said Robert McNab, economics professor at Old Dominion University and director of its Dragas Center for Economic Analysis & Policy. “This is especially good news for women in the service sector who have been disproportionately laid off during the pandemic.”
Tourism is likely to follow suit, McNab said, as people who didn’t take their vacations last year take them this year instead — further funneling bodies into restaurant seats and dollars into registers.
“We project that the tourism and hospitality industry is poised for a rapid recovery in the coming months, largely due to improved consumer confidence due to vaccinations and improving economic conditions,” he said. “Nationally, domestic airline travel has continued to increase and airlines are projecting increases in demand, especially in the summer months.”
Hampton Roads already finds itself better situated than most regions. The area has largely escaped the crippling wave of restaurant closures that washed over many cities, especially in the pandemic’s early months; we were buoyed in part by Paycheck Protection Program funds, stable military money and car tourism from cities up and down the coast.
But Hampton Roads restaurants this spring will nonetheless look much different than they did last year. While most may have survived the terrible winter months, many are still fragile, and have taken on extra debt. The economy’s quick boomerang has led to a hiring crisis, leaving restaurant owners struggling to fill the gaps. Meanwhile, the pandemic has reshaped dining habits, and in some cases entire restaurant neighborhoods.
Here’s the state of the dining scene in Hampton Roads.
Workers slower to return
For now, the sudden surge in business has been a double-edged sword. In some ways, these past few months have taken the character of a reckoning for an industry that has long relied on an eternal supply of willing workers.
“Another day of low staffing = unfortunately another day we have to close up,” wrote chef-owner Moe Stevenson on the My Mama’s Kitchen Facebook page on April 20. “Thankfully the issue is not lack of customer support, cause y’all got us on that. We just need 2 more people ready to roll ASAP.”
Restaurant owner after restaurant owner has told us the same thing: As business ramps up, they can’t hire enough people to meet the flood. Owners are stuck stepping into the kitchen, washing dishes and often reducing restaurant hours.
After Luce’s expansion to an extra dining room to compensate for seating restrictions, Caruana said his business is now even better than it was before the pandemic. But he can’t staff it.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Caruana, who wondered whether the $300 federal unemployment supplement was to blame. “Restaurants have always been a place where people could and would go. It was a place people could go as an avenue to carry on their lives during school or hard times. Or, people like me have made careers. Now it doesn’t seem like it’s an inkling in the eye of anybody.”
“I feel as if this whole industry is getting checked,” said Evan Vang, general manager for multiple locations of Viet-Cajun spot Boil Bay. “So many people lost their jobs last year and a lot have moved onto different jobs. A lot of people are taking the unemployment that is around $600 a week still.”
Higher unemployment checks are only part of the story. Lack of vaccination has been a significant factor in people’s reluctance to work in high-risk environments, said McNab, the economist.
Many in the restaurant industry have not long had the chance to get their shots, noted bartender Kendra Muse, from Norfolk’s Colley Cantina. And as bar seats reopened this month, she said, unvaccinated bartenders may be forced to mix drinks in close proximity to unmasked drinkers. Some spots, such as nearby Benchtop Brewing and LeGrand Kitchen, have opted not to open their bar and counter seats.
“Most people I know in the industry aren’t vaccinated, have only received one, or just got their second one — yesterday in my case — so far,” Muse said. “Because while deemed ‘essential’ we weren’t qualified to be in (phase) 1a or 1b like grocery, pharmacies, etc., despite being the only places where you are allowed to have your mask off at all.”
Restaurants hoping to lure back workers will likely need to raise wages, McNab said — especially if workers have found other jobs outside the industry. Even then, hiring won’t be instantaneous, as vast numbers of restaurants all try to hire at the same time.
“As restaurants, bars, hotels, and similar establishments are trying to hire workers, they are finding that the pool of available workers has already shrunk significantly from just six months ago,” he wrote. “While some employers are trying bonuses, they are not yet increasing hourly wages, and workers are finding themselves in increasing demand across the regional, state, and national economy. Workers are savvy enough to realize that a $200 or $500 bonus after three to six months of employment is not that much of an increase.”
Some restaurateurs, including Vang and Mango Mangeaux co-owner Lakesha Brown-Renfro, say they’ve already been offering higher wages than most restaurants. Brown-Renfro says many on her team have worked their way up to $17 an hour. But both still have staffing shortfalls at their respective restaurants, and Brown-Renfro said she’s even seen other restaurants try to poach employees.
“The free market has changed,” said Brett Kassir of Virginia Beach’s Hot Tuna and Shorebreak Pizza. “We don’t need a $15 minimum wage by law: It’s already here. The vast majority of my people are making well above that. It’s market economics.”
Vang wonders if the current restaurant hiring crisis indicates a sea change in how restaurant workers now view their jobs — and their value to employers.
“Overall I believe the restaurant industry has always been a place where low wages and long hours were just accepted,” he said. “I think people are realizing now that $12 to work on a line in the kitchen, or $2.13 plus tips, is just not going to cut it anymore. Especially when you can lose your job in a matter of a day, like it happened last year.”
Resting on fragile foundations
Though the CARES Act re-upped on billions of dollars in grant money for restaurants, this doesn’t always mean the money is yet available to restaurants that need it.
The third round of PPP funding is slowly wending its way to business owners, but the $28.6 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund — which also includes money for back rent and non-payroll expenses — won’t open applications till May 3. (Restaurant owners can pre-register for grant money starting at 9 a.m. April 30 at restaurants.sba.gov.)
In the meantime, restaurant owners have had to find new income, cut staff, take out loans, defer rent or dig into their savings, said Chris Savvides, of 69-year-old Virginia Beach restaurant Black Angus.
“In May, June, July, we were at 60 to 70% of our business. In December I was off 90%, because there was no catering,” Savvides said in February. “You take an industry where profitability is an industry average of 5%, and you’re off by 30%. I mean, where do people think that’s coming from? It’s coming from deferred payments, or out of someone’s retirement plan. Because it’s not coming through the front door.”
Most restaurateurs, he said, had been white-knuckling through the winter — and eventually all deferred payments will come due.
At Nouvelle in Norfolk, co-owner Luke Brigham had to take a contracting job outside the restaurant to shore up debts and pay back rent. Both he and co-owner Rina Estero stopped taking income from the restaurant, as Estero worked mostly solo in the kitchen.
They’ve had to decide each month which bills to pay, and which to push until later.
“It’s a matter of looking at which ones are going to impose fees, and at which percentages, and which ones are going to be worse,” he said.
As indoor dining returns, it potentially means more income, but it also means more overhead as they attempt to hire staffers. And likely, this may mean higher food prices — a refrain also heard from owners who are raising their staff’s wages.
“Restaurants have tried to offer food at the lowest possible price for decades,” Brigham said. “So the concept that someone might have to pay more for the same food they got a few months ago, it’s probably gonna be a turn-off for most people.”
But in the meantime, Brigham has been shoring up the holes by working long hours. He often goes straight from his other full-time job to the restaurant: washing dishes, tending bar and serving food.
“For some people, it’s got to be a funny story,” he said. “‘Oh, the dishwasher came out to recommend this wonderful Cote du Rhone.'”
Brand new downtown Norfolk, brand new Phoebus
During the pandemic, some neighborhoods have seen a significant changing of the guard, or even a renewal.
Walk down Granby Street in Norfolk or Mellen Street in Hampton on a sunny Saturday this spring, and it can look like Austin, Texas, in the 2000s: patio after patio filled with streetside diners, and maybe some live music on the sidewalk. Perhaps no two neighborhoods have changed as much.
Norfolk’s Granby Street changed, in part, through city action. A private-public initiative called OpenNorfolk helped plunk heated “streatery” patio seating in former parking spots along Granby Street, with parking backfilled by an extra lane of parking on nearby Boush Street.
“We put feet on the ground, lugging barricades out as fast as we could get them up and running,” said Downtown Norfolk Council’s Jessica Kliner. “We took fast action, and now that we’re finding success, people like the vibrancy and the scene.”
But with the loss of both nightlife and office workers, downtown Norfolk was hit harder than most at the beginnings of the pandemic. Some of the region’s more prominent early closures happened here, including fine dining spot St. Germain and salad-and-wine eatery Green House Kitchen. Ambitious plans for a food hall called Granby Station will also not move forward.
But just as many restaurants are opening. For every spot that closed, multiple restaurateurs have come forward to bid on the space, said S.L. Nusbaum Realty Co. vice president Chris Zarpas earlier this year.
The former Green House is now a cheese steak shop called Major Phillie, while the former Barrel Room is set to become a Latin-Caribbean restaurant called Republic.
The former Rustic Tart, which closed just before the pandemic, is set to become a high-end Mexican spot called Alebrije from the owner of California Burrito. Fine dining spot Syd’s FishPig, and soon the Granby Waffle Shop, are new at Selden Market. NBA referee Tony Brothers planned his new steakhouse and jazz club, Brothers, entirely during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, long-running businesses have also pivoted — in the parlance of the times — to new models.
Omar’s Carriage House is now a standing outdoor tent party, where owner Omar Boukhriss may be your waiter for the night. Beer bar Norfolk Tap Room has repositioned itself as a pizzeria, while Granby Bistro and Deli is home to groceries.
The many parking-space patios, at eateries from Lamia’s Crepes to beer bar Tap It Local, have reshaped how people use downtown, Kliner said. She says her organization is helping restaurants turn the makeshift patios into more permanent structures.
Especially, there are more people out on the weekends during the day, Kliner said.
“It’s bustling down here,” she said. “We have bike riders, people on scooters, people finding alternative things to do. At Town Point Park people are working out, rollerblading. Families are out picnicking. It’s not just during a festival anymore.”
Meanwhile, Hampton’s Phoebus is experiencing its umptieth revival, stretching back to the days when the raucous bar district was nicknamed “Little Chicago” for its bootlegging and prostitution.
Lately, the liveliness of the area has more to do with sidewalk musicians and streetside patios, whether at 5-year-old restaurant Mango Mangeaux or brand-new wine bar Fox Tail.
Fox Tail and French-inflected bistro The Baker’s Wife opened in late 2020 and early 2021, respectively. The first Black-owned brewery in the region, 1865, is on its way. One Phoebus restaurant, The Point, closed during the pandemic — but is already plastered with signs announcing a forthcoming steakhouse called Drexler’s Wood-Fired Grill.
Brown-Renfro and her two partners have opened multiple businesses in Phoebus alongside Mango Mangeaux, from a spa to a boutique hotel to a social club called Noir. Late last year, they also opened a spacious new homestyle cafeteria restaurant called Charlotte’s.
She said the current bumper crop of restaurants and businesses is what she always had in mind.
“We’re now the oldest restaurant on the block, and we are happy to be a part of the resurgence of Phoebus,” she said. “It’s an area full of charm, a diamond in the rough. And we wanted to be a part of something like what’s going on now. Phoebus had a vibrancy before, but it’s even better now because of the diversity of businesses. … The neighborhood is a total vibe. With Phoebus, people were always passing through. Now they’re stopping in.”
Matthew Korfhage, 757-446-2318, matthew.korfhage@pilotonline.com
