This series highlights hospitality professionals who are responding to the industry crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic in particularly creative, conscientious ways.
Recently, I received an email from a restaurateur I know here in Denver, Karin Lawler of wine and cheese bar The Truffle Table, who told me about a confab she’d just had with two other proprietors I also know, Kendra Anderson of cocktail lounge Bar Helix and Whitney Ariss of all-day neighborhood hub The Preservery. For four hours, the three women had talked shop and, more importantly, commiserated; the stories they swapped motivated Lawler to reach out and ask whether I would be interested in “translating these confusing feelings we’re all having [to] reach the ears that need to hear them.”
Indeed I was, moved by the fact that the trio had found sisterhood in the midst of this pandemic. So I asked them about that as well as their experiences over the past couple of months and their plans for the future. Our interview took place on May 22; on May 25, Governor Jared Polis announced that Colorado’s restaurants could reopen at 50% capacity. At the time of this posting, Ariss planned to reopen on June 2, Lawler sometime during the first week of the month, and Anderson around June 11.
How have you been operating since the mandate to close was issued in mid-March?
Kendra Anderson: My pivot has been many pivots. At first we were just doing drinks, but when I saw that people were really responding to comfort food, I revolved around to the idea of the [barbecue-centric] “Helix smokeout.” It’s been a week-to-week evolution, and it’s super-strange because you don’t have the benefit of dialogue with your guests; we think we’re doing the right stuff, but there’s no real way to know. You pack the shit up and hope for the best.
So it’s a nightmare wrapped in a trainwreck, and what shocked me was how all-consuming the effort is to recreate your business. The Bar Helix experience was meant to be enjoyed in real life. Caviar bumps don’t work to go; they don’t work in a no-contact world. Once you get past that and figure out what you can do, then you face the cost, the operational and supply-chain challenges. I’m a staunch environmentalist, so sourcing for takeout has been a nightmare. We’ve updated our website like 77 times. We have to update the POS all the time and do social media nonstop: “Oh, here’s what we’re doing today, and here’s what we’re doing in three days.” There are 900 e-mails every day. And all this is before I’ve spent five minutes thinking about my own personal health and safety, which doesn’t even happen [often] because you get so punched in the face.
Karin Lawler: [My family] returned from an eight-month trip on January 17 and quickly discovered that [a planned] sale of the restaurant wasn’t going to go through, so we were grateful [at least] to have a business that was really doing well. Then the virus started creeping a little closer. Within an eight-week period, we went from Cyprus to being on lockdown with sand still literally in our pockets. It definitely pulled the rug out from under us.
We had never done takeout here; it just doesn’t translate well. But we modified the menu and talked to all the staff; we had three people who were still willing to help out. We had a really healthy line of credit we were pulling from, and we got a grant from the city, so there was no problem with bills, just with racking up debt. [Husband and partner] Rob and I have two boys, ten and 12; one of us is always with them and one is always here. It’s a constant surprise every day. You think you’re OK adjusting, and then you have to adjust again. We went down to [operating] five days a week, and that has helped tremendously.
We also started [lunchtime pop-up] Fancy Hot Dogs two or three weeks ago. We were in Germany on our travels, where they have really good sausages, but you can’t get an American hot dog there, and Rob and the kids love hot dogs; it was one of the first things we wanted when we came back. So we were thinking we wanted want to do a business out of the side window [at The Truffle Table], and Rob said, “We’re doing hot dogs—starting next week!” [Laughs.] It has been a great boost to what’s still only 60% of our usual revenue.
Whitney Ariss: Of the three of us, it’s been less of a dramatic pivot for me. The Preservery had a menu that was already well-suited to what turns out to be the takeout habits of Americans right now, which are really driven by comfort food. We didn’t make many changes there other than adding a grocery element, though the revenue we can generate in that sector is up and down. One difference is our guests now are much more [concentrated] in the neighborhood. There’ve been a lot of über-regulars. It could be just two different guests who are the bulk of your revenue, buying eight bottles and meals for the week and stuff like that.
The way our kitchen is set up is hugely helpful. I insisted that we have a freezer walk-in; most restaurants devote as little space to that as they can, but when shortages happen, we can overpurchase for things we know we’re going to want. Honestly there was a lot more fear for us in the beginning, when we didn’t know if any of the aid was going to come through. We did finally secure a PPP loan and the EIDL, and we now feel we can be more realistically hopeful about the future—though in the midst of all of this, we’ve got a two-year-old daughter who’s lost all of her normal routine and child care; my husband [and partner Obe] had to take everything on operationally. Only now, with restrictions loosening, I’m finally able to step back into a managerial capacity and have conversations with our chef and hospitality manager and try to imagine what this new operation will look like.
How have you three helped each other through this in the meantime?
Ariss: Our meeting was instigated by Kendra; she was already friends with Karin, and I was a long-distance admirer of Karin’s—I was totally obsessed with [The Truffle Cheese Shop] when she had it. Kendra and I met because I went to Helix and introduced myself; I try to make it a point to support other women-owned businesses, and she’s a bad-ass.
She had posted the article that Gabrielle Hamilton wrote [asking whether the world still needed restaurants] and tagged us, and both Karin and I had somewhat similar responses. And she was like, “We should get together and hash out ideas.” We talked forever, and one of the really wonderful things about it was that it feels tremendously lonely and scary right now and impossible to really know how other people are doing. Anyone who’s a woman boss is very aware of how important public perception is: You put on this face of “everything’s OK, we’re keeping a good attitude,” but everything’s fucked up. We’ve only been making about 20% of our usual revenue. So getting together and being really honest with each other is beautiful, and I hope our industry can be more honest about how scared we really are, how cash-poor our organizations are.
Anderson: Part of what made our get-together helpful was the feedback. Karin came having reviewed our respective websites [with an eye toward] how easy they were to navigate, and she’d jotted down notes about things that would help us enhance our online menus—she felt mine lacked representation of me and what she knows me to be good at. And when you launch Truffle Table, you see this in-your-face pop-up box that says “We are open!” You need a quick pop-up box, a call to action: “Order now.” What I highly recommend is to have your peers review your website and critically assess how easy it is to use.
Lawler: It was so healing. Friends and family fill all the holes that the world picks out of you, and that’s what our meeting did for me. I’ve known Kendra for some time—she and I were the only women wine buyers years and years ago at tastings and stuff—and I wanted her and Whit to constructively criticize my website, my packaging, what we’re putting out into the world. And then we just chatted about life, how we’re adjusting: “What can I do? How can I help you, participate in what you’re promoting?” I have no pride or ego as an owner. If I needed to get a job at 7-11 to stay open, I would do it—whatever it takes to support my family and my staff and my community.
What’s next for you?
Ariss: Our model is high-contact. We tried [when The Preservery first opened] to have counter service, but we found it a hindrance because people don’t want to think about everything they might want to order [up front]. And we also felt the lack of conversation and interaction—it didn’t feel hospitable enough to us.
At least in the beginning [of the reopening phase], though, my chef and I were both of the mind to go back to counter service; we thought it would keep everybody safer. My husband and manager didn’t agree. But we’re most mindful of how our team feels about all this—the wild card of people coming into our space again, especially when you add the factor of alcohol. Just yesterday I was there when this couple came in—really nice, respectful. They ordered an Old Fashioned and she downed it in the courtyard, which isn’t allowed, obviously. She just started getting drunk in the courtyard, then waltzed back in, no mask on: “Your Old Fashioned is so good!” You want to be nice to people who are supporting you, but how do we lay down the law? It’s going to be a constant struggle.
Lawler: We’re getting picnic tables delivered this weekend, so we’ll be seating outside. Ideally what we’re thinking about doing is wine dinners—one seating a night, reservation only. Our idea behind that is that our restaurant is part of a group of places where people bar hop. They come here and get a drink before dinner at El Five, or they go to Linger and then come here, and that isn’t something that we need to be encouraging right now. Hardly anyone in this neighborhood is wearing a mask, and it’s concerning. I understand everyone’s intentions are really good, they want to support as many businesses as they can, but I don’t want everyone to come here on their way to five other bars. We cannot flood the marketplace; I don’t want to have to close down again. So I want to know: Where are the limits to my concerns about my guests? “Are you sick right now? Can I take your temperature?” Do I even want to do that? I was working in the HIV field in the early 1990s, and it was horrible the way people were treated because of ignorance.
Anderson: I’m literally rewriting my business plan—and the concept won’t be Bar Helix; it just won’t be. I don’t in good faith feel as though a sexy cocktail lounge experience is what people want right now. I don’t feel good about trying to sell that model. But what would I like? How can I represent some aspects of that concept that would feel fun and safe?
[Meanwhile,] I’m on a task force that’s a well-intentioned effort on the part of the city, but I think it remains to be seen how well or closely they are able to take our recommendations. I hope there’s a real response that includes this team’s feedback, but it’s like trying to change the tires on a moving bus.—Ruth Tobias
