The buck stops here: The personal impact of our closed restaurants

When I first became involved in restaurant management and ownership back in the Washington, D.C. area, I quickly learned how totally immersed you must be to make it successful. Your entire schedule and that of your family is built around that of the restaurant. Everything in your life, from birthday parties to graduations, from anniversaries to funerals, becomes secondary to the smooth operation of the business. You might turn the key at night, but you’re still there in spirit. Things are always in the back of your mind, like, “What if the power fails and $12,000 worth of food in the walk-in spoils?” It nags at you, but you keep doing it. Because it’s what you signed up for. When I started writing about food, I dubbed it “relentless.”

Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing Carlie Carey. Along with her husband Scott, she is the owner of the very (very) small but very (very) popular One Coastal restaurant in Fenwick Island. Talk about a labor of love – Carlie and Scott are there with their team all the time, welcoming guests by name and telling walk-ins as gently as possible that they should have called for reservations before showing up. In addition to the everyday running of their beloved eatery, Carlie and Scott have a small farm that provides much of the fresh produce and flowers for which One Coastal is well known.

Obviously, all that has changed. I thought it might be interesting to give my readers and listeners a behind-the-scenes peek at what’s happening at our local eateries – especially the tiny “mom & pop” places that quite literally subsist day-to-day. So I asked Carlie to tell me what this shocking restaurant closure has been like for her, for Scott, and their little daughter. I know that her sentiments are certainly shared by many of the restaurateurs here and everywhere.

“Our team is like our family.  And I mean that in every sense of the word. Something we’ve really tried to concentrate on in the restaurant, with it being this small, is that we expect a lot from our team. And we try our best to give it back to them as well. They’re more than just employees to us. We know them as a mom, or an aunt, or a volunteer in our community. We know their whole person, and that’s part of why I love my job and why I love being a restaurant owner.

“The sad part is that when something like this happens, we feel like … we just had no warning and there was no indication that this was coming. If somebody had said two months ago, ‘OK, great! In 2020 around April you’re going to have to close the doors for God knows how long.’ That would have been a different story … it would still suck, but it would be a different chapter in our book because we could have prepared. But that isn’t what happened. So, when all of a sudden they tell you that you can’t open your doors, you have a responsibility to your team. I have many friends out there who own businesses, and it’s the same for them. We have to tell all these people who rely on us (and it’s a privilege and honor to be a part of their livelihood and how they pay their bills) that all that has been stripped from all of us over a matter of hours.

“As a hospitality person, that’s just a really, really weird feeling. I feel it in my bones. Hospitality is woven into the fabric of my heart and I want to take care of people. I want to hug people when they come into the door, I want to ask my team how their sons and daughters are doing … but that’s all been ripped away. The rug has been pulled right out from under us.

“So that is one hardship, I think. It’s clear that a lot of people lost their jobs. A lot of other industries are going through the same thing, and I am right there with everybody. But it doesn’t prepare you for how it will break your heart to just talk to these people. Just a few weeks ago we were having our best year ever. We were beating our numbers, and we were well on our way to making more magic in that restaurant than has ever been made. And now … at least right now … we don’t have that opportunity. It truly breaks my heart.

“So that’s one side of it. The other side of it is that now we have to adapt; we call it pivot, so we are pivoting into this takeout and delivery thing. We are doing this tiny … this tiny little bubble of business that we used to not do at all because we were too busy inside the restaurant to offer takeout. We’re trying to navigate all these new things, and because we don’t have a team any more that we can afford to pay, the only way to navigate it is to do it ourselves. You said it in the beginning: I am the bottle washer, I am the dish machine ninja - I can clean that bathroom in 45 seconds flat…. But here it is seven years later, and I’ve made other things a priority: my daughter, my husband, our farm; it’s like a little homestead. We have chickens – those are the eggs we use to feed ourselves. We have lettuce growing. We can do all of these things, and we’re incredibly grateful that our team has allowed us to do that. But … there is no team now. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to ask them to do anything that I can’t pay for. And that’s the truth: We just can’t. I know there are a few restaurateurs out there that can, and my hat is off to them.

“But that’s not our chapter; that not where we are right now. So we’ve had to let go of our team, break our own hearts, and fight for pennies. We are absolutely thankful that people are ordering that pickup each week. I love it that people are gaga over my cinnamon rolls. I feel so fortunate that I can take some butter, flour, sugar and mix that up. I’m so thankful that I have this skill … well, I don’t know if it’s a skill, but I have this … thing … that people are willing to buy. They even send them to nurses in the area; I’ve taken some to police departments, to fire departments and all that, but it has taken me away from my own bubble of life that I have intentionally built. My livelihood has been ripped away – yes, I know how to work in the restaurant; I know how to manage my team – but I really don’t know how to get there at 5 a.m. every morning, bake for six hours, then run home to check on my daughter and my husband. And then come back to the restaurant and work until 11 p.m. I just don’t know how to do that anymore. But that’s now my responsibility, because beyond anything I feel obligated to my team to be a leader who will open those doors again when they tell me it’s time. And without some sort of plan, a takeout and delivery plan, that won’t happen for us. And I refuse to lock that door and never go in again. So I’m doing what it takes, just like a lot of other people out there.

“But it’s not as easy as ‘Oh well, we all have to sacrifice a little bit.’ It’s upside down. It’s an alternate reality. It’s a lot harder than what you see when you come to pick up your food and we’re waving at you with gloved hands and we have big smiles on our faces. We are immensely grateful and through the roof that our community is lifting us up. But it’s more of a challenge than it looks.”