Walk with me as I share a series of letters to the industry I’ve dedicated my life to, and work through what’s next for the bar industry in the Post Pandemic World.
Is the party really over? It feels over. Or was it ever even a party to begin with? Could it all have been a fever dream or an elaborate layering of smoke and mirrors?
Cracks in the FOundation
Over the past decade, the bar industry has been in a full-blown renaissance; not just in terms of creativity and innovation, but in becoming a respected trade and a powerful ecosystem for community and professional development. And then, seemingly overnight, the pandemic slid in and ripped the world we’d created back down to its skeleton— exposing the flaws and problematic practices that were bubbling below the shiny surface. We as an industry right now are as brittle as straw men, braving the wind storm and trying to hold tight to what’s left, while watching what we’ve built crumble around us.
In this strange new world, everything feels like uncharted territory. It’s clear that the tools we once relied on are no longer and there isn’t a map for what’s next. Even the basic things we thought we could always rely on like community among bar owners and support among customers aren’t a sure bet.
RESTRICTIONS
The odds seem stacked against us. With capacity limitations so severe that we’re barely breaking even, how much longer can we tread water? What’s the good in delivering safe eating and drinking experiences for our customers when we inevitably have to close our doors? What good is a bar community when we’ve become so desperate to stay open that we’ve become competitive at all costs? How can we support each other when we’re all on the same sinking ship? What good is building a business around the well-being of our employees when the government can furlough all of us in an instant or limit capacity so severely that we can no longer employ more than a handful of people?
DEDICATION
Our industry is hard. It’s long hours. It’s missed holidays. It’s physical. It’s painful. It’s emotionally draining. It doesn’t pay extremely well, it’s hard on our loved ones, and it makes it difficult to have a work-home-life balance. If you don’t love it with everything in your being, you don’t last. So its the few who choose it that are made of true strength and grit.
It’s the Bar Owners, Bartenders, Bar Backs, Servers, Hosts, Security Guards, Line Cooks and Chefs who live for the industry life. They bleed for it. They rarely give up. And leaving is never an option. I think it’s this inherent stubbornness that will be what get’s us through to the other side of the pandemic.
Our industry has always been a bit of a ThunderDome; hyper competitive in terms of attracting customers and just as competitive in employing the best talent and creativity around. But, everything we once knew has changed. The things that once gave us a competitive edge like large spaces, loud sound systems, high end cocktail programs, and cheap beer on draft; are now viewed as horrible weights in the new economy.
BARRIERS
Our challenges are changing fast, sometimes week to week, sometimes by the hour. Adapting to the unknown is exhausting. And expensive. Every day we try and solve the ever-changing and increasingly complex math problem of time, space and survival.
Safety in our industry has moved to the forefront of every discussion. We’ve tried to meet the challenges as best we can. We’ve installed plastic barriers. We’ve increased our cleaning protocol. We enforce temperature checks and Covid testing of employees and we’ve reduced our hours and capacity. And still, the nightmare feels unending and math problem has yet to be solved.
ACCOUNTABILITY
As the pandemic roars on, it continues to reveal further cracks. Problems with the tipping system, the stability of the industry itself, and healthcare are all coming to light. Systemic racism, segregation, diversity, inequality, and equity are now being given the platform they’ve always deserved to be taken seriously and given the fuel needed to make proper change. Where these themes once had no voice, business owners, workers and customers alike are now being challenged to acknowledge the mistakes made and begin to write a new history that includes fair treatment of every human being.
Like other industries, we had excuses for allowing these things to continue to exist and we told ourselves a stories to sweep them under the rug. Day-to-day operations of a bar or restaurant are grueling, and the work of owning a business is an around-the-clock job. This means much of an owners life is existing in survival mode. And without the luxury of time, how could we focus on creating structured industry standards or addressing difficult issues.
WHAT’S NEXT?
It wasn’t until the pandemic that all of that changed. Suddenly the old crutches don’t work anymore, because we now have NOTHING but time. With many of our bars unable to operate under current state/region-imposed restrictions or have such stringent guidelines we are not operating anywhere near pre-pandemic levels, we find ourselves alone with our thoughts, and plenty of space to strategize.
The easy route would be to wallow in the misery of the present, and sit in the ashes of what was or what could have been. But we’re not the easy-route kind. I know that somewhere in the unknown future exists a path to bigger and better things, and for those of us who are ready for the fight, I hope that what’s on the other side is a better world.
How will you use this time? Will we return to the business practices we had pre-pandemic? Do we get “back to normal”? Or do we use this as a time to be transformed by this moment and create something new?