Call it the new PPP: the post-pandemic pivot.
As restaurants in the area gear-up for summer, they are planning for fewer employees, higher prices for products and a general expectation that this summer throughout the greater Lake George-Saratoga Springs corridor will be at least as busy as last year, and last year was surprisingly busy.
Robert Averill said the pressure to get people to shop local over the past year really helped his restaurant, Saratoga Gluten Free Goods on Broad Street in Schuylerville, and he praised his customers in an interview yesterday.
At the same time, he said no one should expect more tables to appear inside his building.
A cluster of bar-height tables sit cluttered and mostly unusable in a corner. At some point, he might rearrange them to make them useful again.
“I’m torn,” he said about exactly what to do.
This is despite the Cuomo Administration’s announcement that restaurants can open to 100% capacity in two weeks. Local restauranteurs interviewed, are not sure how that will happen [read our first story about this here].
“In reality, not a lot has changed,” said Liz Swoyer, who owns Scallions on Lake Avenue in Saratoga Springs and is the front-end manager.
She sat on the cushioned bench near her front door and pointed at a month old help wanted sign posted in the window. She said they hired two people who were referrals and were getting one more who saw the sign. In a normal spring, she said she would have a stack of applications.
No one even applied for the entry-level dishwasher position. In this industry, she said, “that’s unheard of.”
The lack of employees to fill jobs means fewer tables, she said, pointing through the window at the empty sidewalk. Saratoga Springs allows restaurants in certain areas, with a permit, to set up tables outside.
Scallions has the permission, and would place tables, she said, but they have no staff to serve them.
Rick Davidson, owner with his brother of Davidson Brothers Brewery on Glen Street in Glens Falls, said he could fit a few more tables inside--although they must be six feet apart by state rule--and many more would fit outside. Even with most of his pre-pandemic staff returning to work after being laid off, he still does not have enough to cover all the possible tables.
Restauranteurs said they are still in survival mode and looking for solutions.
Cassandra Wilusz in Schuylerville does not have a staffing issue--“In that regard, I’m lucky”--at her small Revolution Cafe, but the lack of business has meant pulling way back on hours. She’s now open 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. when 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. was the old normal. It is a way to focus on the time period when she does the most business, she said.
With the six-foot rule in place, “I won’t be able to do indoor dining” until the vaccination rates go way up. She said that will likely be next year.
David Shulman, owner of Beyond the Sea in Bolton Landing, said, “We can’t get [staffing] help...This changes the way we potentially do business in the summer.”
He is looking at closing one day a week to give everyone a rest and remain fully staffed on the other days.
Technology for some is playing a role. Both Davidson Brothers and Scallions have tried the ubiquitous QR code-based menus, with some pushback from older clients who need to be taught how to use them. Davidson said this simple step allows a server to cover more tables.
Also, it allows the menu to change instantly, Davidson said. If they run out of an item or the price moves too high to make an affordable offering, they take it off the electronic menu instantly, he said.
Scallions still uses paper menus as well as the electronic ones, but those are single-use and cost $1.20 each to print, Swoyer said. They have spent thousands of dollars in menu costs, she said.
Her husband, Eric Swoyer, the chef at Scallions, said they pulled N.Y. strip steak from the menu. He aims to have the food cost of any item be 30% or 35% of the item’s price, with overhead like salaries, rent, heat and electricity making up the rest. But the price of beef has put N.Y. strips at about 55% of cost.
He said, “It’s just not going to work anymore with the price of beef.”