Photo by Sarah Marcella Creative
Mia's Italian Kitchen
When the coronavirus pandemic began shutting down businesses left and right in early March, Chelsea Anderson, marketing manager for Alexandria’s Homegrown Restaurant Group, began to put her thoughts down in a diary.
“I call it ‘The COVID Diaries,’” she said. “Everything was happening so fast. It's pretty crazy to wrap your head around when you look back at it.”
On March 17, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam mandated that restaurants reduce capacity to no more than 10 patrons or close. Alexandria's robust and award-winning dining scene came to a screeching halt thanks to the order, which was meant to help stop the spread of the virus.
The National Restaurant Association estimated at the time that the industry nationwide could lose $225 billion in sales by July 1 and shed 5 to 7 million employees.
Anderson said Homegrown Restaurant Group, among other things, raised more than $10,000 for employees in a GoFundMe effort. “A lot of our regulars donated huge amounts of money. One family was so sweet — the kids ran around the house and gathered their change from all their piggy banks and put it in a bag and dropped it off for us.”
Her dad, longtime Alexandria restaurateur Mike Anderson, told her, “9/11 was really, really bad — it hurt restaurants immensely. We opened Pork Barrel in the middle of the 2008 recession, which was still way better than right now. He's had some doozies, but this is unlike anything he's ever had to deal with.” In addition to Pork Barrel BBQ, the group's restaurants include Sweet Fire Donna’s, Tequila & Taco, Whiskey & Oyster, The Sushi Bar and Holy Cow.
Photo by Sarah Marcella Creative
The Majestic’s Dave Nicholas outside the restaurant at 911 King St., wearing a mask to help stop the spread of COVID-19.
Dave Nicholas, a partner at Alexandria Restaurant Partners, who makes his home in Old Town and Florida, said he and his team huddled on a call “every single morning at 9 a.m. from early March on,” wrestling with “‘What do we do?’ and ‘How do we move forward?’” ARP's restaurants include Vola's Dockside Grill, Mia’s, Joe Theismann’s, The Majestic and more.
“After we had our layoffs, the true work kicked in,” Conrad said. “We immediately created a Facebook group page to keep everyone together and informed.” Management was accessible and HR helped with questions about unemployment and COBRA. The company created a gift card relief fund, where 100 percent of funds went back to those in need.
“The biggest thing was to be able to pivot,” he said. “We pivot 10 times a day some days. We’ve never lived through anything like this in our life, and I hope for all of our sake we never do again or anything like it again. It’s a crisis for sure.”
“It wasn’t about how much business we could do,” he said, “but it was ‘Can we still employ people?’ Which is important — we have 700 employees, so it’s important to try to employ people.” One of the ways ARP helped employees was giving them family meals for four three times per week.
Joseph Conrad, executive chef of Oak Steakhouse in Alexandria, said the first order of business was communicating with employees. He “drove to each restaurant under The Indigo Road Hospitality umbrella for team meetings, explaining why we had to close and ex-plaining the process of unemployment. We wanted to make sure they felt secure that we are in this together and our goal was to re-open and do everything we could to retain everyone.”
“After we had our layoffs, the true work kicked in,” Conrad said. “We immediately created a Facebook group page to keep everyone together and informed.” Management was accessible and HR helped with questions about unemployment and COBRA. The company created a gift card relief fund, where 100 percent of funds went back to those in need.
Meanwhile, many restaurants across Alexandria, including Oak Steakhouse, reinvented their businesses by offering delivery and pickup, taking orders and bringing meals out to customers or set-ting up sidewalk tents where they took orders — including, eventually, for to-go alcoholic drinks.
“We’ve had great success with to-go business, success we never thought we would have,” Nicholas said.
Photo by Alexandria Living Magazine
Anderson said their restaurants quickly moved to pick-up service even before the restaurants shut down, popping up a sidewalk tent in Del Ray even while Pork Barrel remained open for dining. “From March 15 to the end of the month, every morning, it was like waking up and re-strategizing your entire business model,” she said.
In Del Ray, “we ended up running three full-size restaurants out of a 10 by 10 tent on a sidewalk overnight. That first week we were overloaded with orders and people weren’t respecting social distancing. At the same time, we're trying to keep our staff safe and keep everything clean and make sure everyone has the right PPE (personal protective equipment) on. It was really, really crazy.”
Being able to sell mixed drinks has been a mixed blessing, she said, with some people popping open beers and wanting to hang out.
Mayor Justin Wilson, who had pushed for curbside alcohol sales in a letter to the governor, was the first to buy a mixed drink to go, purchasing the Wilson's Rum Runner April 10 at 12:01 a.m. at Pork Barrel BBQ from co-owner Bill Blackburn.
“Justin has been really awesome in trying to do anything he can to help out small businesses, especially the restaurants in Alexandria. Getting any off-premise liquor license has been huge and some-thing that I know that I never thought I’d ever see,” Anderson said. “I know that my dad, who has been in the industry for a million years... I never thought he'd be doing to-go margaritas. Getting to-go margaritas has literally saved Tequila & Taco from some serious trouble.”
On Cinco de Mayo, the Mexican restaurant had to stop taking orders for several hours because they were so slammed, Anderson said, noting that other Mexican restaurants around town were just as busy, with many “stir-crazy” residents looking for a reason to celebrate and “feel some sense of normalcy.”
Meanwhile, restaurant owners, managers and employees are looking ahead, uncertain but hopeful. In late May, the region entered the first phase of Gov. Ralph Northam’s “Forward Virginia” plan to start reopening businesses. As part of that plan, restaurants were allowed to open for limited outdoor dining. The City of Alexandria quickly put together regulations allowing restaurants to use parking spaces for tables.
“I don’t know how fast it’ll come back,” Nicholas said. “When it comes back we’ll be ready, but safety is first."
The biggest takeaway for Conrad, he said, was that “restaurants are important.”
“They are more than a place to get food and drinks. Restaurants are places where experiences are made and emotional connections happen. Restaurants are about community and the powerful connections that can happen when breaking bread with others. Restaurants need help so that we can continue to be there for our communities, friends and neighbors,” he said.
Alexandria is a tight-knit community, and so is its restaurant industry. “We spend a lot of time venting to each other,” Anderson said, “because we find that they're the only people that can really fully relate to us, but the community has been amazing.”
“Especially in Del Ray here,” she said. “Because the production and distribution chain is not up to par like it usually is, we’ll go over to talk to Jeff [Wallingford] at Taqueria el Poblano. I can’t tell you how many times we've had to steal some jalapenos and limes from him and Nicole [Jones] over at Stomping Ground. He needs things every once in a while, and we'll give them to her and vice versa.”
“We've always been that way,” Anderson said. “All the local restaurants were always trying to help each other out. But especially right now, I think that we everyone's really showing their true colors. It's been really fantastic actually.”
How to Support Your Local Restaurants
In the past few months, restauranteurs across the country have taken to social media to show how services like Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grubhub negatively affect their bottom line, taking significant percentages of sales and charging fees for service. While these apps are easy for hungry diners who want to order food for take-out or delivery, it’s much better for the local business to order directly.
Here are some tips:
• Go to the restaurant’s website directly instead of looking them up on a third-party service like Uber Eats.
• If your favorite restaurant does not have online ordering through their own website, call the restaurant instead. (Use the phone number listed on the restaurant’s own website. If you call a phone number you found through Uber Eats, Grubhub or DoorDash, the restaurant may be charged a hefty “finders’ fee” for your call.)
• Be sure to tip as if you were eating in the restaurant!
