Here in NYC, the hospitality industry has essentially been shut down yet again with the loss of indoor dining. (Okay sure, yes, we still have outdoor dining, but even the cutest igloo set-up simply cannot entice me to try and enjoy a meal outside in the dead of winter). While not totally unexpected with the recent uptick in hospitalizations, it is a huge blow to the already severely impacted industry.
Some of the places I have worked at or have loved as a guest have already shuttered permanently this year, and the ones that haven’t are begging and pleading for help and support. Since that is actually the only way we will be able to keep them around and not lose the beauty and charm of our city to chain restaurants, I thought I’d put together a list of the best ways to help struggling restaurants and bars during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Order takeout or delivery directly. Obviously the easiest way to support is continuing to order takeout and delivery from the places we would have been drinking and dining at anyway, but before you fire up Seamless or DoorDash to place that order, remember that upwards of 30% of your bill is going to those corporations instead of to the restaurant or bar you’re ordering from. And that’s not even including the fees they charge you! If you want to be most effective with your money, call (yes, call, I know we hate doing it!) the venue directly to place your order, or see if they offer online ordering directly through their website instead of a third party service.
Tip. Tip! TIP! T-I-P!! In a global pandemic, where the general public demanded that the hospitality industry be considered essential, therefore asking employees to risk their health in order to provide a sense of normalcy and convenience to your life, YOUR MINIMUM TIP NEEDS TO BE 20%. Nothing less, and absolutely more if you are able to. I will happily do a deep dive into tipping and why the practice of “10% for poor service, 15% for standard service, and 20% for exceptional service” needs to be abolished, but for now, simply accept that you must properly compensate the employees providing you a service that you have deemed essential. (And for extra brownie points, tip cash whenever possible! All credit/debit card tips are taxed fully and we receive them on our weekly or bi-weekly paychecks. We are generally able to take cash tips home each night, and only have to declare 10% of cash earnings for tax purposes.)
Trade out Starbucks for your local bar. Hear me out before you think I’m leading you down the road to daytime drinking (though it is 2020, anything goes these days, so you do you, bébé). A lot of venues have transitioned their hours to be open earlier in the day in an effort to capture as much business as possible, and with that, many are offering coffee service! Use what used to be your Happy Hour spot as your new mid-afternoon coffee pick-up. I promise you, your $5 means so much more to your lovely neighborhood bar turned makeshift coffee shop than it does to a corporate chain. Added bonus? You can always order a shot of whiskey to make it an Irish Coffee!
Buy gift cards and gift certificates. This is an easy one – we are in the season of gifting after all! Your friends and family will buy that thing you have in your Amazon cart for them themselves. Be the gift certificate fairy for the holidays this year instead, and give your friends something unique and support local small business at the same time! Need something small for all your co-workers? $5-$10 gift cards to a local pastry or ice cream shop! Something epic for your parents or best friend? Design a whole date night experience for them fully funded by gift certificates – $40 to the speakeasy cocktail bar for drinks, $80 for dinner at the restaurant around the corner, and $20 for dessert at that place you had the most divine time toasting your own s’mores that one time…
And merchandise! Is your favorite hole in the wall dive bar selling t-shirts now? Buy one! It might be a pajama shirt now, but in 15 years, that vintage bar tee is going to be pretty damn cool.
Skip the grocery store. Check if any of the restaurants and bars around you have shifted their dining rooms to be markets! Some are selling their own creations as grocery items, and some are selling specialty items mirroring their cuisine style that you wouldn’t find at your chain supermarket. The restaurant down the street might be selling hand rolled pasta, or an interesting butter and fresh baked bread, or even straight up duck fat. (Side note: I highly recommend confiting your chicken in duck fat with some lemon peels – oh my god, thinking about it makes me drool.)
Use your favorite bar to stock your home bar. Bypass the liquor store and get your wine from the bar around the corner from your apartment that you used to get a glass at anyway! You can also get whole 750ml bottles of pre-made cocktails if you’re missing just a damn good cocktail. And if you fancy yourself an amateur mixologist now that we’ve been in quarantine for nine months, elevate your home bar with some of the ingredients in cocktails at your favorite bars from those favorite bars!
Donate to restaurant relief funds. If you’re more the philanthropic type, you can donate directly to relief programs for restaurant workers. My personal favorites are the Service Workers Coalition, a grassroots organization which funds $50-$100 a week grocery stipends for out of work service industry workers, as well as rent relief when they are able to, and Another Round Another Rally, which has different programs to apply for on a monthly basis for relief funds. Remember that your donations are tax deductible, and you can be assured that your money is going directly to people in need. I’ve personally received some form of aid from both organizations throughout the course of the pandemic, and trust me, $50 for groceries comes in clutch when your entire unemployment check is already earmarked for rent.
Write positive reviews online. Even if you can’t help financially, you can still help! One of the very unfortunate side effects of our industry being built on a “the customer is always right” mentality is that the minute anything goes “wrong” during a guest’s experience at your venue, you can almost be sure that they will write about it online, with the expectation of either being given a refund or being “invited back” with the promise of a portion or the full bill being “taken care of” in order to “prove” that the initial experience was “not up to our usual standards of service”. Because of this, guests now have a tendency to write negative reviews about anything and everything – and more often than not, about things that are entirely out of the staff’s control. (This has always been an issue, but is even more so now. Can you believe people actually have the nerve to write negative reviews about restaurants and bars that are just following state laws and guidelines for COVID-19?) You can help counteract those reviews by writing positive ones about your experiences! Does your local pizza spot make what you think is the best slice ever? Write that! Did you have a fabulous time at a bar for your birthday last year? Write that too!
Call and write your local government officials. Make sure the people you elected to office are voting to pass legislation that you want to see enacted! The RESTAURANTS Act, which would give millions of relief funds specifically to restaurants and bars, is included in the CARES Act, which as we all know is stuck in the void currently known as the Senate. The new proposals with additional PPP funds is not enough and does not target bars and restaurants specifically. You might not think your call or postcard means anything, but there is someone at that office taking your call or receiving your postcard. And even if it gets boiled down to “We received 20 calls about relief for restaurants and bars today,” imagine if that number was 1,000, and imagine if it was every week, or every day. Your voice does matter, and we in the industry can’t scream loud enough by ourselves.
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These venues and us as hospitality professionals have helped you celebrate your birthdays, your engagements, your anniversaries. We’ve hosted your first dates and your girls’ nights. We were there when you lost your job, when you got stood up, and when you just had a bad day. Maybe you turned 21 with us, maybe we helped you propose to your significant other, or maybe you brought your family to us to show them how cool this new city you moved to is. You’ve sang karaoke on top of the bar with us, fallen down because you had one too many with us, and maybe even puked in our bathrooms a time or two. And we want to keep doing all of that with you! Your favorite spots just need a fighting chance at keeping their doors open in order to be able to do so, safely. ♡
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