Page 16 - BusinessWest May 16, 2022
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 In January, one of the thermostats in the res- taurant’s dining room failed, causing one sprin- kler head to freeze. When the heat came back on, the ice in the line moved and activated the sprin- klers. By the time Collins could shut off the sprin- klers, the restaurant had taken on nearly 15,000 gallons of water.
“The basement was a nearly complete gut job,” Collins said. “In the dining room, we replaced floors, seating, and several walls.” It took exactly six weeks to go from the flood to opening the doors once again.
“I looked to my customer base and called the contractors who are regulars at the restaurant. They had a vested interest in getting us back open.”
Locating a contractor can take six weeks, so how did Collins make the repairs to Center Square and re-open so quickly?
“I looked to my customer base and called the contractors who are regulars at the restaurant,” he said. “They had a vested interest in getting us back open.”
In some ways, the sprinkler incident is a meta- phor for the struggle for area restaurants as they look to make a full comeback after the pandemic. Just when people are dining out again and restau- rant owners are looking to make up for two years
of lost business, they are getting hit with spikes
in food costs, increased labor costs — when and if they can find staff, that is — and various supply challenges that affect food and kitchen operations.
“It’s a triple whammy,” said Ralph Santaniello, co-owner of the Fed-
eral Restaurant Group. “In some ways, this has been more challenging than the pandemic.” He quickly admitted that while the pandemic was a crushing event that came out of the blue, govern- ments, communities and vendors all came together to help everyone get through it.
In addition to the Fed-
eral in Agawam, Santani-
ello and partner Michael
Presnal own Posto Italian in Longmeadow and Vinted Wine Bar in West Hartford. Following his parents, who were in the restaurant business, Santaniello said he has been in the industry his whole life and has never seen prices as crazy as they are today.
“We used to plan out the business to see where we would be in five years, then it went to five months, and now it feels like it’s five minutes,” Santaniello told BusinessWest.
Aurelien Telle, co-owner of Alta Restaurant, says price increases on food the past
six months have been “insane.”
      Everyone we spoke with discussed the chal- lenge of rising costs. Aurelien Telle, co-owner of Alta Restaurant in Lenox, said that even after fore- casting for increased costs, they were 6% higher than anticipated in the first quarter alone.
“That’s huge and we don’t know where it’s going from there,” said Telle. “In the last six months price increases on food have been insane.”
Adding to the craziness in food
Restaurants
Continued on page 18
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