Page 43 - BusinessWest February 3, 2021
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Graduate
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themselves and for others’; and ‘seek opportunities to understand and serve the community.’
Now that the portrait is essentially complete, said Foster, those leading this initiative are pivoting from writing that document to writing a strategic plan, one that will attempt to prioritize what has been learned over the past year or so and create a blueprint for action and change moving forward. The aggressive timeline has the plan
Restaurants
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out restaurant. We were making $50
in sales a day — we were in shock,”
he recalled. So he shut things down completely through April, secured a PPP loan and other grant funds, and reopened for takeout in early May, then outdoor seating a couple months later. Armed with the PPP, he was able to bring back the whole staff, and the breakfast-and-lunch establishment added dinners to generate more busi- ness. When funds ran dry, dinner went away.
These days, with takeout and lim- ited indoor seating, Washut is bringing in about 30% of typical sales, and the combined staff is down from close to 50 to around 15.
Throughout all the changes, he has prioritized safety. Even if the governor’s 25% seating rule changes tomorrow, he said, “I’m not going to increase my din- ing room beyond 25%; my staff and I don’t feel that’s appropriate right now. There may be things we’re allowed to do but, in reality, we choose not to do.”
Gohr had a few advantages last year when it came to keeping people safe while generating business. One was a large parking lot next to Fitzwilly’s that he rented from its owner for tented outdoor dining. He could seat 70 there, while the city of Northampton’s deci- sion to turn parking spaces on Main Street into dining space added about eight more tables to the restaurant’s existing sidewalk seating.
“We really had a great summer,” he told BusinessWest. “Through the sum- mer, we had a capacity of 100-plus guests, the majority of them outdoors.”
Gohr’s other advantage is a large indoor space with a normal capacity
of 280. The 25% mandate has hurt this winter, for sure, as did Baker’s 9:30 p.m. curfew, which was only recently lifted. But seating 70 — separated by plexi- glass barriers — is better than seating a dozen.
“We’re very fortunate to have a lot of room in here, and we’re able to dis- tance people. These places that have even 50 seats — and there’s a lot of places in town with just six tables — but even the ones with 50 seats, now you’re down to letting 12 people in. You can’t survive. So we’re fortunate given the size we have. Seventy people
being completed in August, in time to implement changes for the next school year.
“We ended this with a recognition that there are some small ways and some big ways that we need to think differently and change schools,” he explained. “Schooling in the United States has been done in a relatively similar way for a very long time, and some pretty significant things need to change; some of those are going to be one-year changes, and others are going to be five-year changes.”
Drawing Conclusions
Moving forward, those we spoke with they expect the POG initiative to help introduce new performance mea- sures and ways of evaluating whether students are ready to not simply receive a diploma, but succeed in what has always been the broader goal — success in the workplace and in life.
“You can have someone has mas- tered English and mastered math who is not ready for the workforce,” Foster said. “So part of the strategic plan will be introducing new performance mea-
sures that are not a replacement of but an addition to the ones we have today; we’re thinking about how you evaluate student performance differently.”
Where this thinking takes the school system is a question still to be answered. But the process begins with a portrait of a graduate, and in Spring- field, this is still a work in progress and an important step forward. u
George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]
of a snowy weekend that could wipe out almost an entire week’s worth of revenues. It’s his staff who have been most enthusiastic about staying open, believing it’s important to stay in the public eye, so that Galaxy is a go-to destination when people start emerg- ing from winter hibernation.
Still, he said, “everyone wants to go back to what normal is, but if this goes on long enough, does normal shift?”
It’s a good question, and one Washut asks himself as well. “Every day, I’m thinking about my business, trying to find that crystal ball,” he said, meaning no one really knows how 2021 will go. But he’s hopeful.
“Once it gets warm again, once the outdoor dining opens up for food-ser- vice establishments, I think the initial rush of business will be great. Unfortu- nately, with restaurants, it’s really hard to be proactive; we’re constantly in a
reactive mode.”
Specifically, it’s tough to staff up for
a rush that might be around the cor- ner, but restaurants also don’t want to be caught flat-footed if things pick up quickly. And things might not pick up much at all in 2021.
“This will be with us for a lot longer than we want to tell ourselves, and at some level, we have to come to terms with that,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll be hosting 60 to 80 people in our din- ing rooms this year; we won’t have that level of business for a while.”
Yes, the combination of warm weather — and outdoor dining — come spring, and the prospect of ris- ing herd immunity from the vaccines, might inject some life into the industry, but next winter could be just as diffi- cult as this one, depending on how the pandemic’s endgame goes — if an end- game even materializes in 2021.
Meanwhile, Washut appreciates any community support he gets. “If you only come in for gift cards, awesome. If you only get takeout, awesome. Maybe we’re not in a financial position to pass that goodwill on in an equal manner, but I’ll be damned if we won’t later on. If we all keep that attitude in every level of our life, we’ll get through this for sure.” u
Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]
Casey Douglass is confident Galaxy will return to its go-to dining status in Easthampton once it’s safe to eat out again.
gets us by. We can survive on that if it doesn’t change.”
A mild winter, weather-wise, helps as well. “If you start getting snowstorms on weekends on top of all the other stuff, then we’d be in trouble. But we’ve had pretty good weekends.”
A PPP loan and other grants also helped, and he’s applied for a second PPP loan, with this round capping
the disbursement for certain hard-
hit industries, including restaurants, higher than the first, so he’s hopeful for another influx to carry him to the spring. He’s already in talks about rent- ing the parking lot again, and the city has discussed moving outdoor seating into Main Street again as well.
Pressing Through
Still, Gohr, like every other res- taurant owner, knows 2021 could be another year of upheaval. “We’re hop- ing everyone gets the vaccine and we get back to normal. But I don’t think it’s going to be real quick.”
He’s appreciative of customers eat- ing in the restaurant, and said gift-card sales were strong over the holidays, although not to the level of a typical year, when more people are out shop- ping. And he does believe outdoor din- ing will be a hit again. But it’s harder to pin down when customers will flock to restaurants at pre-2020 levels.
“My gut tells me it’s not going to be in the spring; it’ll be late summer or fall
before we get to that point,” he said. “The mindset that I see in the public
is all over the place. I know people — friends and some of my regular cus- tomers — that have not been anywhere since March. And then there are oth- ers, the minute we opened the doors, they were back. Everybody’s obviously more careful, but everyone’s comfort level is completely different. It’s a wide spectrum.”
Douglass senses real community support for Galaxy, noting that some regulars stop by three times a week, and others drop big tips and cheer- lead for the establishment among their peers.
“I feel like, at least in this commu- nity, [the pandemic] hasn’t hurt on a big scale economically,” he said. “We haven’t had factories shut down. I’ve heard people are paying their rents. And I think, come the spring, people are going to be pouring out. As much as people are still nervous, if the service staff has been vaccinated, if a major- ity of customers have been vaccinated, people will be coming out in droves. I think people are going to hunker down all February, and then in March, with the outdoor dining, people are going to be like, ‘sign me up.’”
If that’s especially optimistic, Doug- lass balances the thought by saying he’s had some dark days as well, wondering if it’s worth the effort to stay open right now, and fretting over the possibility
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