Page 25 - BusinessWest February 3, 2021

Casey Douglass with some of the supplies used in Galaxy’s takeout business, which has been its dominant model for almost a year.
outdoor-dining opportunities that Fitzwilly’s has (more on those later).
“It’s been such a whirlwind for small busi- nesses the past 10 months, trying to get our bear- ings with all the changes,” said Alex Washut, who owns two Jake’s restaurants in Northampton and Amherst. “Last year, it felt like you were opening a new restaurant every single week. You had no historical data to compare; you couldn’t look at sales and ask, ‘how did we do this last time?’
That’s because there was no ‘last time’ — no comparable pandemic in the past century, any- way. “Everything was out the window,” Washut said. “We asked, ‘who are we going to be this week?’ Then there was a bunch of changes, and
we had to conform to those, and then it was a new restaurant the next week.”
Like Fitzwilly’s, evolving to a takeout model early on was new territory for Jake’s. “We were never a takeout restaurant; maybe 3% of our gross was takeout food,” he said. “So we had no system for it.”
The various systems that area eateries devel- oped, in the weeks last spring when takeout was the only option, involved details ranging from what containers to use to how to present food attractively and, for restaurants that opted for delivery, how to keep it warm in transit.
“We were able to pivot quickly,” Washut noted. “From there, we moved to outdoor dining when
that was allowed, but we had never had out- door dining before” — and questions had to be answered regarding permitting, staffing, health and safety factors.
The positive, he noted, is that, if 2021 follows a similarly bumpy trajectory, “we know what’s expected, and we know how we’ll react in the spring, how we’ll react in the summer, and how
“Last year, it felt like you were opening a new restaurant every single week. You had no historical data to compare; you couldn’t look at sales and ask, ‘how did we do this last time?’”
we’ll react once the fall and winter come along.” Indeed, the establishments that survived last
year’s storm are, if not stronger for the experi- ence, at least a little wiser, even as many are bare- ly hanging on. The hope, of course, is that 2021 is nothing like 2020. But in this industry, so critical to the economy and cultural life of Hampshire County, nothing is certain.
Survival of the Fittest
“We’ve evolved a lot.”
Those were Casey Douglass’ first words when asked what this year has been like at Galaxy, the
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