Q&A's Archives - Open for Business

Lindsey Autry: this isn’t a business you can do alone

The coronavirus pandemic has shown that for restaurants, community comes first – including staff, guests, and professional peers. Operators are quick to stand in solidarity and share struggles and successes. As part of OpenTable’s partnership with Top Chef’s Restaurant Wars, we tapped into that spirit of generosity, asking chefs to tell us about the ups and downs of their careers: lessons learned, mistakes made, and their personal evolution along the way. Hear their stories, get inspired, and find resources to help in uncertain times here.

Lindsay Autry grew up on her family’s orchard in rural North Carolina, preserving peaches and tomatoes and competing in cooking competitions with the local 4-H. Before long, she knew food was more than a hobby and enrolled in culinary school.

For more than a decade, she cut her teeth working with award-winning chef Michelle Bernstein in Florida and Mexico before earning the public’s attention as a finalist on Season 9 of Top Chef. In 2016, she opened her first restaurant, THE REGIONAL Kitchen & Public House in West Palm Beach, which marries Mediterranean flavors with her Southern roots. Here, Autry shares her early influences and why failure is the best teacher.

What’s the best advice you received early on?

My grandfather was a professional public speaker, and he would tell me to stand in my own shoes. At the time, I interpreted that as standing up for myself, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized what he really meant was just to be yourself and be authentic. If you’re true to who you are as a person, things will come to you a bit easier.

What’s the best advice you’d give to another chef or restaurateur who’s opening their first restaurant?

To stay strong and know that it’s a lot harder than it appears on television. If you put your head down and work really hard, eventually it will pay off. This is a very mundane business, with a lot of action and repetition. You have to find a way to break it up.

Your team and your staff are the most important aspect of your career. As a young chef, I would feel like I was on an island. Now, I realize about 60% of my staff has been with me for 10 years, and I don’t know what I would do without them. To anyone starting out – develop your team, and know that this isn’t a business you can do alone.

I would think that as you’re taking on more projects like Top Chef, having that trust in your team becomes all the more important.

One of the hardest lessons to learn is delegating, to let go and trust other people to execute your vision and work. [My teammates] carry the weight of the restaurant when I have a day off. I just had a baby! It’s good to know that you have people you can lean on.

What has been the most exciting moment of your career?

Top Chef, for me, was terrifying, but it also has done so much for my career – accelerated it, and gave me exposure to be able to advance myself. Last year, I got to cook with Martha Stewart, which was definitely a bucket list for me. Usually I’m not someone who’s freaked out in front of celebrities, but I literally was speechless when I met her and made a fool of myself.

You mentioned that opportunities came your way after Top Chef. What were some of those?

It allowed me to get exposure not only nationally, but within my own community. A lot of people didn’t know I was a chef here. [After], people knew I was a serious chef that had experience.

What’s one of the biggest mistakes you’ve made in your career?

I always joke that I’ve had my heart broken by more restaurants than relationships. It’s a really risky business – there are a lot of things you can control, but there are things that are kind of out of your control, too.

I waited a long time [to open my own place] because I knew what the failure rate was. Nine out of 10 restaurants close within their first year because the financial structure is really hard to sustain. Along the way, having restaurants close helped educate me to be able to open my own place with a little bit more confidence. It’s still a risk, but I’ve got 15 years under my belt of knowing what to try to avoid.

You opened The Regional in 2016. Now that you’re a chef-owner, how has that changed your approach to your work?

I have to do every aspect of the operation. In the past, when I was executive chef in a restaurant, I would really focus on the back of the house. Here, I worked with my other partner and some designers to design the actual space. I do all of the hiring for front-of-house management. I worry about maintenance contracts and bills. So now I worry about everything instead of just 60% of it!

As a younger chef, a lot of times you’re more focused on the creative aspect and you can be stubborn in your food. A lot of that is just immaturity and growth. Opening The Regional, I had a certain concept, but that has evolved over the past three-and-a-half years. The people that support my restaurant or the guests that come in – I’ve evolved to what they have been receptive to. They created what my business is now.

Can you tell us more about your Southern upbringing and how that influenced your culinary style?

I grew up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, which has a lot of military bases, but my family also had a peach orchard. I grew up in 4-H, so it was very Charlotte’s Web – pigs, goats, lamb. I started cooking competitions through 4-H.

My mom’s mother made incredible desserts, and my dad’s mother is actually from Greece, so I grew up with this weird mix of Southern and Greek food. In the ‘80s, grocery stores didn’t have feta or romaine lettuce, so my grandmother would make Greek food using what she had – spanakopita with cottage cheese because there was no feta. I’ve gone back to my roots here at the restaurant: We do a blend of Southern Mediterranean cuisine.

Since we are talking Top Chef, we’d love to hear more about these early 4-H cooking competitions.

They were all outdoor grilling, so you had to show that you could build a fire, and it was always based on a protein. I started when I was nine, and they didn’t separate you by age, so I would do cooking competitions with people from age nine to 19. I ended up winning the state level against 19-year-olds.

Sounds like good Top Chef training. When did you know you wanted to be a chef?

I wasn’t from a place that had fine-dining restaurants or even chefs in restaurants. When I was in high school, I came across a book for Johnson & Wales, and that was the first time that I ever thought, I could go to school to be a chef. Everybody was pushing me to go to Duke or UNC-Chapel Hill and be a pharmacist or a lawyer.

What were some of the most important things you learned working for Michelle Bernstein?

I was with Michelle for about 12 or 13 years. I credit so much of my career to being able to shadow her and see her level of professionalism and her drive. She was able to lead and be a strong woman and stay feminine. She was never apologetic for being a woman in a kitchen. She showed me that at the end of the day, we’re not female chefs, we’re just chefs.

Working with her, I was able to learn a lot not only about cooking, but also the business side and the public side – how to portray yourself in public and how to be on TV. We still talk all the time.

Photos courtesy of South Moon Photography

In it Together: calling all leaders with Kevin Boehm & Naomi Pomeroy

OpenTable’s new weekly webinar series, In it Together, tackles key topics facing the industry during the COVID-19 crisis. What does hospitality look like in a time of emergency? How can we support our communities today, both financially and emotionally? Hosted by our COO Andrea Johnston, the platform brings together restaurant leaders and experts to foster conversation and share advice during uncertain times. Register for free for upcoming webinars featuring Steve Palmer, Becca Parrish, Elizabeth Blau, and many more.

This week a group of restaurant executives and leaders met with the Trump administration to address weaknesses in the Paycheck Protection Program, a key component of the CARES Act intended to keep hospitality workers employed. The conversation marked a critical moment for the industry: today, restaurateurs aren’t just business owners but advocates, effecting policy change at the highest levels.

One voice at the May 18 roundtable was Will Guidara, a founding member of the Independent Restaurant Coalition (IRC), an organization dedicated to saving local restaurants. (As many as 25% of independent restaurants could close permanently due to the coronavirus pandemic.) The IRC was founded in mid-March, when a group of celebrated restaurateurs across the country joined a phone call with a simple call to action: Would you help us save restaurants? From reps at the James Beard Foundation to Guidara and Top Chef’s Tom Colicchio, plenty came on board to raise capital and start lobbying.

For our most recent In it Together discussion, we invited IRC leaders Kevin Boehm, cofounder of Chicago’s BOKA Group, and Naomi Pomeroy, chef of Beast in Portland, Oregon, to weigh in on how to lead in a crisis.

“We’ve come a long way in seven weeks, with 60,000 participants,” said Pomeroy. “We’ve been hearing that we’ve gotten more traction on The Hill in a short period than anyone has ever seen. You take people used to working 16 hours a day – what the hell else are we going to do?”

“We went from state-mandated closure straight into IRC advocacy,” added Boehm. “We didn’t know each other before, and we’ve become friends through this. We have a phone call nearly every morning – it’s like a support group as well as advocacy.”

Unite around a common ask

Pomeroy attributes some of the IRC’s impact to the all-hands-on-deck effort that earned the coalition a seat at the table. The organization joined forces with representatives from the National Restaurant Association and national chains to push forward a common ask – to amend and extend the PPP.

“Everyone was in support,” she said. “It was about finding the channels where there was agreement on how to save the industry.” She emphasized that even though the IRC boasts some big names (Tom Colicchio, Andrew Zimmern), the coalition encompasses different styles of restaurants, including her 26-seat spot.

Educate others about the business

“We found early on that most politicians didn’t really understand how our businesses operate,” said Boehm. To explain why the PPP needs to change, restaurateurs first had to educate policymakers about the cost to run a restaurant, how employment works, and the scope of the issue (11.1 million people work in independent restaurants nationwide).

Boehm identified two specific changes to the PPP that the coalition would like to see. First, the program allows restaurants eight weeks to reopen and operate at full capacity; the IRC wants to extend that period to 24 weeks. Next, they want the PPP to give restaurants until the end of 2020 to get back up to 100% full-time equivalents.

“We don’t want a bailout, we want the opportunity to get back to work because we’re so important to American society, cities, and neighborhoods,” he added.

Education extends to restaurant guests and the general public, too, Pomeroy said. “Restaurateurs have been so busy eeking by that we haven’t had the chance to communicate with communities about what it takes to do what we do,” she explained. “We have make-up work to do in that area – to educate about why food needs to cost what it does.”

Be honest, inclusive, and vulnerable

When it comes to leadership style, both Pomeroy and Boehm default to honesty, while remaining inclusive of different viewpoints. “It’s important to say how you feel and also find the sweet spot that doesn’t alienate people and tends to be bipartisan,” Pomeroy said. “The cause here is restaurants – everybody wants to go out to eat, whether to an old steakhouse or a Vietnamese noodle shop down the street. We can find a lot of commonality at the table.”

For her, being honest and vulnerable means sharing doubts with her team about how to use loans, for example, and whether she can bring servers back after the crisis. And if her team needs to find alternative work in the interim, she’s understanding.

Solicit ideas from others

At BOKA, Boehm is proud to have collective intelligence in his executive team, who talk through issues as they come up. He appreciates that everyone around the table has a unique style and perspective. “Abby [Kritzler, Executive Director] is the most compassionate person I know, and also risk-averse,” he explained. “That’s why she has a spot. Making all of these decisions together has been an exercise in finding the right answer that gets us to the intersection of doing the right thing, being responsible, and keeping our company running at the same time.”

Pomeroy also has great leadership, but because her team is small, she doesn’t have the same support network. As a result, she leans on the IRC. “One of the reasons I’m so passionate about the IRC is because I’m able to have those conversations and reflect. That’s given me a lot of inspiration.”

She’s also soliciting ideas from her community. When she announced that Beast might not reopen in its previous format, guests were devastated – and Pomeroy wants to use their investment to engage them in the future of the restaurant. She plans to survey her email list about what they’d like to see. “How can we all create something together?”

Raise collective expectations for the industry

Boehm pointed out that while a T-shirt has skyrocketed in price over the past decade, “a burger is still $15.” The restaurant business has stagnated while the rest of the world has evolved. A couple of decades ago, he would see a 20% profit, but “every year the model gets worse,” with higher taxes and labor costs.

“We need to look at the model, cut better real estate deals, build better pricing structures, and stop having a model that’s so fragile,” he said.

Pomeroy shared that she was shocked to hear Tom Colicchio admit that he only turns a profit in the last four months of the year. “I thought I was the only one going through that cycle, biting my nails every winter,” she said. “I came to realize that’s been par for the course.”

She called on restaurateurs to change the business model by being more transparent, sharing experiences, and banding together to raise prices and exercise their collective voices.

Embrace the silver lining

One plus side of a struggling industry is the opportunity to reinvent it. Boehm noted that over the years, as people mature as ideas become more vetted and filtered, “you dream within this box.” In this moment, restaurateurs can drop the guardrails and think big. “What do I want to be, what do I want this industry to be moving forward?” he asked. “Let’s be really innovative.”

Pomeroy used the phrase tabula rasa, or “blank slate,” to describe the opportunity. For example, she has loved spending more time at home during the shelter-in-place orders instead of working 65 hours a week. “What can I design in the future that has me working three to four days a week? There’s a lot of opportunity for us all to maximize.”

Justin Devillier: prepare, then adapt

A California native, Justin Devillier moved to New Orleans in 2003 as a young cook, eager to join the city’s restaurant community. A year later, he joined the team at La Petite Grocery, cooking Louisiana fare in a Creole-style cottage that housed a grocery store in the 1800s – and he never left. In 2010, Justin and his wife, Mia Freiberger-Devillier, took over majority ownership of the restaurant.

Since then, Justin has collected a host of titles and accolades. He opened another Big Easy restaurant, Justine; competed on Season 11 of Top Chef; and won the 2016 James Beard Award for Best Chef: South after being named a finalist four times. Read on for his lessons learned, from line cook to award-winning restaurateur.

What cooking advice would you give your younger self?

Really take the opportunity to learn as much on your own as you do at work, through cookbooks, media outlets, and videos. As a young cook you don’t get a creative outlet at work, you get a lot of fundamentals and technique. Being able to go home and research and apply techniques to your own creativity is a good head start.

You joined La Petite Grocery in 2004, but didn’t take over ownership until 2010. During those six years, did you aspire to take over the business?

I didn’t know that was coming. I was focused on getting my training, and then I took over as Executive Chef in 2007, able to transfer that experience into a leadership role. Then in 2010, I had the opportunity for ownership. That changes into a business situation, where you’re learning about finance. It was definitely a build-up.

And what was that transition like, from the kitchen to the full business?

Challenging but unique, because I worked through all of those stages in the same atmosphere. That comfort level is already there; I knew everyone involved. Even as far as business relationships, I already had those contacts. There wasn’t, “who’s this guy coming in and trying to change everything.” I had already built that trust, and it was a huge advantage for me personally.

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made in your career? What did you learn from it?

Not buying Amazon stock in 1999.

From a creative standpoint, you’re not going to be successful every time. A good goal is to not make the same failures become habitual or consistent. I like making technical mistakes – you can get as much out of those as successes.

What was it like opening your second and third restaurants, Balise (now closed) and Justine, and developing concepts from scratch?

It’s totally different going from an idea on paper and seeing it all the way through. Three years later, chances are it’s much different than it was when you first thought about it. There’s a bit of compromise, especially when you’re working with a team of people. You might all have the same vision, but you have to respect everyone’s journey getting to that vision.

What were some of the biggest shifts from your original concepts to the realized, finished produce?

So many things. Ideas change as you work through things – factors like space and equipment and personnel. You can’t really get a solid gauge until you’re in it. It’s like what I was saying earlier: your preparation and technique are important, but you can’t always prepare for something you’ve never tried to execute.

You may consider those things limiting, but they’re also expanding. You might find yourself standing next to somebody who makes the best croissants you’ve ever seen. Now, we’re going to specialize in croissants and brunch. Those little things you can’t prepare for until everything’s in place.

Tell us about reestablishing La Petite Grocery after Hurricane Katrina. How did that experience change your approach to your work?

Everyone was just happy to be sitting in a restaurant in their neighborhood that they had been forced out of for a while. I respect and appreciate what it meant to be open. We were working nonstop all day and night, understaffed and super busy.

What changed for you after winning the 2016 James Beard Award for Best Chef: South? How important was it to win after being nominated multiple times?

It was a huge honor – something that I’ll be able to share with my kids forever. I don’t like to think that it’s changed a whole lot, though it’s definitely made the restaurant a lot busier. I also think it gives the people on the team an extra sense of recognition – they understand their hard work is rewarded with an uptick in business.

What was the most exciting moment in your career?

There have been a lot of those. Overall, we’ve been really lucky to have this restaurant on one of the best streets in the country and in the world. That’s enough for me right now. We’ve also been able to take it on the road with the Kentucky Derby and Pebble Beach, to share a small corner of Magazine Street. Owning a restaurant isn’t the most glamorous, and it’s nice to get out and share with people every once in a while.

Images courtesy of La Petite Grocery

John Tesar: you never have the answer

John Tesar started out as a dishwasher, working to support his surf and ski lifestyle, but he never left the kitchen. He cooked in New York and Las Vegas before taking the helm at The Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas, where he found his place on the culinary map. In 2014, Tesar opened Knife, a steakhouse reinvented with Texas-raised beef and specialty cuts at the Highland Dallas hotel.

In 2012, Tesar competed on Season 10 of Top Chef, and four years later he returned for Season 14. Though he never took home the top prize, he learned plenty about media, entertainment, and success in the business. Read on for his insights.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

To work hard and be genuine at what you do. We live in a world consumed with fame and notoriety, and people mistake that for recognition of their work. You have to understand the difference between entertainment and the actual running of a restaurant.

How do you stay genuine in what you do?

It’s how you conduct yourself and relate to people and express gratitude and share the good things in life with other people. In the restaurant business you do that with your restaurant family, coworkers, and peers. People have lost sight of that.

What is consuming them instead?

People are getting saturated with celebrity chefs, and fine dining has died except for a few key places. Social media is like a silent arrogance – you put up 20 pictures of something that doesn’t taste good, and you’re an artist.

You know, food television doesn’t pay a lot of money. And the winner is not always the best chef on the show. You see a lot of people on Top Chef who are probably really good cooks, but they have no personality or they don’t like competitive environments. When you get to the end, it’s very produced. They decide who’s marketable for them. It’s a dangerous thing for the longevity of [the business] because that’s an easy formula to replicate with money. Real restaurants aren’t created with money but with talent and passion and vision.

As someone who’s straddling that line between chef-restaurateur and entertainer, how do you maintain perspective?

It’s been horrific for me. It’s funny that people think I have this huge ego, because it’s just a defense mechanism about what I’ve had to do to survive. This business will come at you all day long with politics and favoritism.

You could complain, but you have to adapt to it. The restaurant business is constantly changing. We’ve created this disposable side, which is not necessarily good for the public or the restaurant, but it’s good for the people who design restaurants, build restaurants, promote restaurants, and give awards to restaurants.

How does that impact chefs?

People don’t give themselves time to put together a real body of work. You see so many spikes and failures. You’re on the cover of magazines, and six months later you’re out of business.

Food is not subjective. It either tastes good or it doesn’t. People are so caught up in the emperor’s new clothes, what’s new and happening. I learned a long time ago that the most important thing is not to worry about what everybody else is doing and to focus on your work. When I was younger, I would be like, why did that guy win that award? It’s a distraction and a waste of your time. The more you can remove these things from your psyche in this business, the better you’ll be.

It sounds like you focus less on the peaks and valleys and more on aggregate experience.

The body of work is what’s always been important. But notoriety, celebrity, television, and personality have pushed it all aside. When I left the Mansion, I thought my career was over. I was shunned by one of the biggest hotel companies in the world, and D Magazine wrote a story about it, put me on the cover, and people jumped on it. Top Chef came after me because I was the most hated chef in Dallas. There are moments where outlandishness will catch you in opportunities, but it’s what you do with it.

With steakhouses, there’s so much competition. How do you think about taking something familiar and improving on it, or presenting it in a way that sets you apart?

Simplicity. You have to have a mix of people in a restaurant; you can’t just cater to one group of people. Concept is number one, location is number two, and then you have to run the numbers before you start. I’d rather have a full restaurant and not one award on the wall – my customers and my five-star reviews and the endless stream of people appreciating Knife.

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made in your career? What did you learn from it?

Worrying about what other people do and doing things more for ego or out of desperation than with a sense of rational thought. Being too spontaneous because I thought I had the answer.

You never have the answer, your customers have the answer. You have to be very clear on your goals. Not everybody is going to like you. You’ve got to toughen yourself up.

What’s your take on the increasingly popular meatless meat movement? Will we see meatless burgers in your restaurants?

We use Hungry Planet on the burger menu. The steakhouse is one restaurant that has a longer shelf life than most because we’re carnivores. You can eat all the Impossible Burgers you want, but the majority of the public is coming back for a potato or a piece of red meat.

How have you continued learning and growing?

I’ve always wanted to reinvent myself. When I go to other restaurants and cities, I’ll come back to my crew and show them pictures – how they clean the kitchen, how the staff dresses, how they talk to each other. It’s respectful and professional. Food always comes first. The day the food’s not good, I’ll try to fix it. The restaurant business is hard enough. We don’t need geniuses.

What have you learned training a new generation of chefs?

Kids today really have to go back and understand culinary history, because we’re losing a view of what classical cuisine is. I run a steakhouse and for six months I had to make Béarnaise sauce every night because people didn’t know what it tasted like.

Corporate America has had a huge effect on restaurant business. The working conditions are probably better. Is the food better? No, because it takes a little pain to make good food at that level. We sacrifice the pain for a little mediocrity. We’ve backed off on discipline and scrutiny, and it’s affected the quality.

What’s your focus right now?

My focus for the next five years is to make both restaurants in Dallas successful. Everyone asks, are you going to keep opening? I’m just doing what I think will work. My main priority is the people that work for me, because without them, I’m nothing. That’s when you know you’re really successful: when you start giving back to the people who helped you get where you are.

When you’re down, work harder, focus, figure it out. When you’re on top, that’s when you give back. That’s what I’m most appreciative for – whether it be divine intervention or just 40 years of hard work, I can rest a little easier for the first time in my career.

How do you think about your own longevity in this business?

I’m going to be the last man standing. How do you retire as a restaurateur and chef? You’ve got to die in the restaurant, in the walk-in at the end of service. At least you’d be preserved for a few hours.

In it Together: taking care of the industry with Edward Lee & Jessica Koslow

OpenTable’s new weekly webinar series, In it Together, tackles key topics facing the industry during the COVID-19 crisis. What does hospitality look like in a time of emergency? How can we support our communities today, both financially and emotionally? Hosted by our COO Andrea Johnston, the platform brings together restaurant leaders and experts to foster conversation and share advice during uncertain times. Register for free for upcoming webinars featuring Kwame Onwuachi, Kevin Boehm, Elizabeth Blau, and many more.

The coronavirus pandemic has forged a new reality for the restaurant industry. Storefronts across the country are shuttered, leaving dining rooms empty and hospitality professionals unemployed. The same people who have long served their communities now find themselves in need of assistance – and the industry is stepping up to help.

In this week’s In it Together discussion, chefs Edward Lee and Jessica Koslow shared their experiences supporting the restaurant employee community during the crisis. Lee, the chef/owner of Louisville’s 610 Magnolia, MilkWood, and Whiskey Dry, closed his restaurants in mid-March, furloughing 90 members of his staff and laying off thousands. He saw the food in his walk-ins and received donations from a local hotel chain, and a picture came together. In partnership with the LEE Initiative, an organization that aims to bring equality to the restaurant industry, the Restaurant Workers Relief Program was born.

“I thought we should do something to help,” Lee said. “We could use our restaurant as a relief kitchen to feed not only our staff, but everyone in the restaurant business.”

Over on the west coast, Nancy Silverton had recently launched the Los Angeles branch of the program at Mozza when she tested positive for COVID-19. The initiative needed to move. Koslow had closed her two restaurants, Sqirl and Onda, and was working on relief efforts of her own, so she quickly offered to host.

“I took what I had started and applied it to the LEE Initiative because they had a bigger foundation,” said Koslow. “Open-source information in how to do this in your own city – through the LEE Initiative or not – will help empower restaurants to be there for the community.”

Enlist partners for help

For Lee, the program gained momentum when Makers Mark signed on as a corporate partner, offering financial resources for him to partner with chefs across the country to feed people. Similarly, Koslow reached out to companies like Imperfect Produce, which reduces food waste by selling ingredients that don’t make it into grocery stores at reduced prices.

“We tell people, whatever city you’re in, there’s a food bank,” said Lee. “There’s a company with money willing to give locally. Reach out and find ways you can get food donations. When you start something and put it out there, kindness is rewarded – people come out of the woodworks and start to give”

Let chefs be experts in their own communities

Although the Restaurant Workers Relief Program now operates nationwide, Lee is quick to say that the initiative has 20 partners, not 20 relief kitchens. That’s because there’s no one-size-fits-all solution – chefs are best suited to navigate the unique needs of their local communities.

Practice new safety protocols

Running a relief kitchen has given Koslow the opportunity to consider how a restaurant reopening might look, because she has to follow similar safety measures now. Her cooks exist in their own “hub and bubble,” never engaging with anyone who comes to pick up food. Volunteers wear masks and gloves at all times. “The safeguards we’ll come back with will be stronger and stranger,” she said.

Find inspiration in others

Koslow has been “overwhelmed” by the warmth and generosity of her L.A. community during the pandemic. For example, one of her sous chefs moved from New York to work at a hotel restaurant and lived in the hotel. When he was furloughed, his housing benefits disappeared, and now he’s living out of his car. He still volunteered his time to come every Sunday and help the LEE Initiative.

Others bring masks and homemade cookies to the restaurant. “The ways people are giving back are really emotional to me,” she said.

Stay in touch with staff and guests

Koslow sends out regular updates on the world of Sqirl, which go out to her entire team. “I try to keep people updated and also be honest about what the future holds,” she said. Because she runs the social media accounts for Onda and Sqirl, she also receives messages from diners who write to say how much they miss the restaurants. “This time has really given us appreciation for our other family – the restaurant community and people who fill our dining rooms.”

Lee recently found a bittersweet way to mark one of Louisville’s biggest celebrations with guests. He offered a Kentucky Derby meal to go, and when regulars came to pick up their orders, he handed them out in a hat and Derby outfit. “I got to talk to regulars I hadn’t seen in months,” he said.

Consider the whole restaurant supply chain

Lee and Koslow are currently working on phase two of the program, which aims to help small farmers who are hurting due to slow (or nonexistent) restaurant sales. Over the next year, the LEE Initiative will raise funds and spend more than $1 million on farmers across America.

“It’s important to support farmers who have grown produce for the season based on what they could sell to restaurants,” said Koslow. “The LEE Initiative has helped to get produce from farmers in our doors and out to the community. It’s rewarding to be able to pay them.”

Be patient and prepare for the future

“The harsh reality is that no matter how much we help restaurant workers, if owners go out of business, there are no jobs,” said Lee. “It’s really about trying to stabilize the whole industry right now so we have a foundation to land on when we reopen.”

Without clear guidelines for reopening, and without governmental support for essential equipment and processes, consumers have little confidence in restaurants’ ability to operate safely. Lee advised waiting a few months to reopen until the public feels at ease and businesses can truly make a splash. “If there is one misstep, if there’s an outbreak, that’s going to reflect on our entire industry. I urge restaurants that open now to do so carefully and think about the community at large.”

Also, talk to others in the industry to learn how they are shifting practices and products. “It’s thinking about how our industry is maneuvering and what that means to you,” said Koslow. “A conversation can help broaden your perspective about what you’re doing in your own ecosystem.”

Advocate on restaurants’ behalf

What else can people do to support the industry? Drive to a restaurant you love and pick up takeout. Donate or volunteer with food banks and charities. Call local politicians and tell them what restaurants mean to you. “If the general public says we need to save independent restaurants because they mean so much to us as a culture and community, it shows that this stuff matters,” said Lee. Ask your staff, guests, friends, and family to get involved now – everyone has the power to help.

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