ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — At first glance, the idea of opening a new business during a global pandemic might not seem like a good one. Nobody’s going out. Nobody’s spending money. Nobody knows what’s next, or even what’s coming next.
What You Need To Know
- New Bay area restaurants are opening even as old favorites are reopening
- Restaurants are operating at 50 percent capacity, and bar areas are still closed
- Even with the coronavirus pandemic, business has been good
But even during a crisis the likes of which America hasn’t seen in a century, people gotta eat, and people gotta work. So a small handful of Tampa Bay entrepreneurs have bitten the bullet and rolled out the red carpet for foodies in what was until a month ago one of the most flourishing food-culture communities in the country.
“It was an extremely tough decision, but we were committed,” says Suzanne Perry of Datz, one of the Bay area’s most visible restaurant brands, about opening a new spot in Riverview. “We’d already done the construction… the clock was ticking.”
Datz — known for its playful personality and a burger with two fried jalapeno mac-and-cheese patties for a bun — opened its restaurant on May 14, barely a week after Tampa area restaurants were allowed to reopen for dine-in service at limited capacity. It was a risky move, given that the concept would be running at 50 percent capacity and that a lot of people were still devoted to staying away from, well, all other people. The new location was in the works for months, however, and the financial peril for any new restaurant is considerable even when they can open on time and to a full house. On the other hand, there are plenty of local-restaurant aficionados sick of the shutdown and ready to indulge. “Business has been very good,” says Perry. “We’re on a wait all the time.”
The pandemic has affected more than just the restaurant’s capacity, though. “The way we handle it now is we have to have people wait in their cars, that’s certainly not what we’re used to,” Perry says. “We’d love to have people sitting in our bar rather than waiting [outside] for us to text them. But everyone’s been great, everyone understands we’re just trying to keep everybody safe.”
On the other side of the bay, Ted Dorsey, executive chef at uber-hip St. Petersburg eatery The Mill, is experiencing similar enthusiasm for a new Central Avenue takeaway concept, Nash’s Hot Chicken.
“Business has been great,” he says. “We really appreciate how the community has come out to support us.”
A stationary food truck-style operation in St. Pete’s once-thriving EDGE District, Nash’s doesn’t have any tables, which may have made for an easier and more accessible opening during the coronavirus pandemic. The concept has a limited menu specializing in spicy chicken sandwiches and soul food-ish sides that’s very different than that of The Mil, which reopened May 13th with a new menu of “small Southern plates” and an exhaustive sanitization schedule typical of every restaurant currently in operation during the pandemic.
For restauranteurs like Dorsey and Perry, who run more than one location, opening a new concept offers a bonus that many might not have considered: It’s another place to put members of their staff back to work.
“For us, it was kind of a no-brainer,” says Nash’s Managing Partner Jason Griffin. “We’re back to doing what we love to do, and this was a great way to create some new jobs for our staff [while The Mill was closed]. We’re bullish, we like to get things done.”
Also in St. Pete, a new aptly-named concept called Book + Bottle opened — not during the restaurant shut down, but days before it was ordered.“We opened three days before the city of St. Petersburg shut everything down,” says owner Terra Dunham.
Dunham was so busy getting last-minute licenses and permits for her passion project that she wasn’t paying strict attention to the latest news about the pandemic, but when it really hit home that businesses were likely to be forced to close, she felt it was imperative to make the new place known. “I thought, ‘Oh gosh, we should open sooner, so we could have a grand opening at least,’” she says with a laugh.
Dunham kept Book + Bottle going during the shutdown by offering book deliveries. When the city and state authorized Phase 1 reopening in mid-May, she held off opening up her space to guests for an extra couple of weeks out of an abundance of caution. “We waited a week to see how everybody was feeling, and to see how much foot traffic was going by in front of the store,” she says. “Then we had a super-soft opening about a week after that with to-go only, no tables. Then the third week was letting people sit down with a glass of wine or browse the books.”
Dunham credits Book + Bottle’s small size and relatively few tables with making it easier to reopen without fear of spreading the coronavirus.“We are so small and we’ve been really able to manage the number of people who are coming through,” she says. “Every time somebody gets up from a table we clean and disinfect it before anybody else even has a chance to sit down. We’re encouraging masks, any surface that’s been touched has been cleaned before anybody else touches it.”
Only time will tell whether or not opening these new concepts in an uncertain environment will pay off, but for them, the idea of putting their plans on hold indefinitely just wasn’t a financial or personal option. The one thing they all miss, though, was the hype, excitement, and fanfare that always surrounded a restaurant’s grand opening in better times. “We will do something, but clearly we’ll just have to rethink it,” says Datz’s’ Suzanne Perry. “I think what we’d like to do is a charity thing, something really special, so we have a chance to get hundreds of people together and get to know them personally.”