A Coalition For Legislative & Governmental Support For Restaurants
Best Served & Fireside at Five #5
by Andrew Parr
This article is the final piece in an anthology of five that focuses on different aspects of the restaurant industry. The series is based on five panel discussions created through a collaboration of Jensen Cummings’s Best Served Live and Connor Holmes’s & Gertie Harris’s Fireside at Five. Cummings has also developed the Paragon Pillars, the “North Star” guiding all of his conversations. The Paragon Pillars set the lofty goals of creating an environment in which restaurants can attain 75% employee retention and satisfaction coupled with 19% net profit at flow state. Jensen gets a “Oui Chef” on the assist with this piece. Fireside at Five finds its genesis from FDR’s Fireside Chats. Its mission is to provide a welcoming environment where passionate and engaged professionals can connect with other diverse colleagues in a facilitated and intentional format.
The topic of conversation for this fifth panel considers where restaurants go from here with legislative and governmental support. Today’s contributing panelists are Aileen Reilly, Co-Owner of Beast + Bottle and Coperta; Dick Carleton, Managing Partner of Storm Restaurants and City Council Member in Breckenridge, CO; Sonia Riggs, President and CEO of the Colorado Restaurant Association; and Ashley Kilroy, Executive Director of Excise and Licenses for the City and County of Denver.
Restaurants need to stay open, and the clearest path there is through a significant package of financial support. This support is not simply to line the pockets of restaurant owners by way of a “bail out” or “free ride;” but rather as a strategic methodology to keep the cornerstones and gathering places for our communities open and to keep the roughly 16 MILLION Americans that work in restaurants employed. According to Nations Restaurant News, the U.S. lost 5.5 MILLION restaurant and bar jobs in April of 2020 alone. Urgency is required more now than ever with the Federal unemployment supplement having run out. Regular unemployment benefits are available in most states for only 26 weeks, however extended benefits beyond 26 weeks have been triggered in most states.
“Being heard is an important factor,” said Reilly, in moving restaurants up and out of this morass. Carleton, speaking from both the restaurant ownership and governmental sides of the table, said that advocacy with information and credibility is powerful. Riggs, leading a vociferous trade organization founded for the benefit of restaurants in 1933, shares information not only with local, state and federal officials, but also with the media. She said it takes not only your voice, but also your personal story to move things forward. Kilroy, in a true moment of empathy shared her work e-mail (Ashley.Kilroy@DenverGov.org) on air; imploring anyone struggling to get answers to contact her directly.
Kilroy spoke of the government in terms of regulating to protect public health and safety; indicating that Health Inspectors are educated to understand not simply the letter of the law, but also to know the underlying reasons for the regulations. It remains paramount for operators to understand all of the regulations, ordinances and executive orders, even as the ground seems to shift beneath us on a weekly and daily basis. To that point, Reilly discussed having a sanitation captain on every shift to maintain health and safety standards, not only for the sake of compliance, but also for the safety of employees and guests. We have never before seen such a divergence of guest confidence levels in the industry as we do right now. Maintaining that confidence with employees and guests will drive business. Reilly also decried the difficulty of keeping disinfectants on hand, using multiple vendors simultaneously to do so. Carleton retold the circumstances of Breckenridge, a small town, and how they repurposed Breck’s Recreation Department to focus on acquiring PPE and disinfectants for all of the businesses in town.
As regards the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), Reilly’s restaurants missed out on the first round, and the extension of the plan is what allowed them to finally open. Carleton’s restaurants did receive funding in the first round, and he said that is what allowed him to keep his team together. With Breckenridge being so seasonal in its business cycles, many of his employees would have simply left town without the support the PPP provided. Riggs said many of the restaurants that received PPP funding early in the first round are in need of money again; to pay their rent or simply to bring in food to cook and serve. In a survey conducted by the CRA, 84% of restaurants responding said that even with outdoor dining they are operating below 75% capacity. This is key, as most restaurants believe they can support themselves at that 75% capacity level.
We are not only living through a pandemic, but also witnessing a tipping point in the history of the restaurant industry (obviously a microcosm of our nation’s overall historical position). It is of supreme importance that the industry, inclusive of every participant, make its voice heard. It does not matter whether the soap box is direct governmental lobbying or membership in a supporting organization. Now is the time to make plain to government officials and all those who vote for them that protecting the restaurant industry is protecting our communities, the people that live in them, and what they stand for.
The biggest take-aways from this panel are:
1. Restaurants need to stay open, and in order to do that they need greater financial assistance
2. Restaurants can gain assistance through unrelenting advocacy
3. The Paycheck Protection Program was never enough
WRITTEN BY
Andrew Parr is a restaurant and hospitality industry leader with over 25 years of experience including operations, consulting, project management, & mentorship. He is the Founder + Chief Advisor at Angry Olive Consulting in Denver, CO.
Facebook and Instagram @angryoliveconsulting.
Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewparr/
The information provided in this article does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice; instead, all information, content, and materials available in this article are for general informational purposes only. Information in this article may not constitute the most up-to-date legal or other information. This article contains links to other third-party websites. Such links are only for the convenience of the reader, user or browser; the we do not recommend or endorse the contents of the third-party sites.
Additional information on Best Served + Fireside at Five and The Paragon Pillars:
Best Served + Fireside at Five chats can be viewed on YouTube
· Chat 1 of 5: Why Restaurants Need to Invest in Their Most Valuable Asset – Their People
· Chat 2 of 5: Running a Restaurant: The Challenges and Opportunities in the Restaurant Operation
· Chat 3 of 5: Searching the Supply Chain
· Chat 4 of 5: The Four Walls - How the Real Estate Sector Can Invest in the Sustainability of the Restaurant
· Chat 5 of 5: What’s Next – Where to Go from Here with Legislative and Governmental Support
Best Served Fresh episode discussing the Paragon Pillars
Additional resources related to the topics of this article:
Restaurant Resources:
· Independent Restaurant Coalition
· Colorado Restaurant Association Letters to Public Officials
· California Department of Industrial Relations
· Free PPE Kits for Small & Micro Businesses (City & County of Denver)
Legislation:
· Colorado Extends Restaurants Selling Alcohol To Go
Andrew Parr is Best Served Creative’s “Herald of How,” AKA Chief How Officer. Understanding why we do what we do and who we serve, Andrew digs into the nuts and bolts of how we get it done. He craves one-on-one interactions and thrives with the written word. The ability to contribute to our Read channel by penning articles covering a variety of subject matter and running down rabbit holes for research quenches his desire to learn.
Andrew has over 25 years of restaurant and hospitality industry experience and his education includes a BA in Psychology and History from the University of Wisconsin along with a JD from Mitchell Hamline School of Law. Andrew was born and raised in Milwaukee, WI, and currently resides in Denver with his wife Jody and their dog Cooper.
