Joe McNamee: Kitchen nightmares - restaurant uncertainty a cruel kick in the teeth

Chef Rob Krawczyk at Restaurant Chestnut in Ballydehob. Picture: Emma Jervis Photography

Chancing on a seat for Restaurant Chestnut’s opening night, in April 2018, it was immediately obvious this was a particularly special restaurant. 

I had eaten chef/proprietor Rob Krawczyk’s food elsewhere and was fully aware of his culinary calibre but this was in a different league altogether, a precise, empathetic, and exquisite delivery of superb hyper-local, seasonal produce from the restaurant’s immediate hinterland.

I wasn’t the only one who thought so. Barely six months later, Restaurant Chestnut, in Ballydehob, West Cork, was awarded a Michelin Star and the future looked very bright indeed for Krawczyk and his life/business partner, Elaine Fleming, who manages front of house.

Now, like so many fellows in the restaurant industry, Krawczyk is still reeling on foot of the news this week that the slated return date of July 5 for indoor dining was being postponed indefinitely, an especially cruel kick in the teeth to a small restaurant in an awkward location that prohibits outdoor dining.

“It was shocking how we found out,” says Krawczyk, “talk about a lack of respect. To be honest, we were not totally surprised once they started to leak the idea in the weeks beforehand, as they’ve done since the start but the way they did it was just awful, just one week before we were to open. 

"Hotels, gyms, barbers, hairdressers are open, you can go to the cinema and eat popcorn for two hours — why is it different for us?” 

High standards

A Michelin-starred restaurant is the most demanding of all hospitality operations for not only must you achieve very high standards in every aspect of the business, not just food, but those same standards must be re-achieved every single day the restaurant is open. 

Many Michelin-starred restaurants begin as elaborately planned business concepts put together on the drawing board by investors and backers ever before headhunting staff and scouting locations.

Krawczyk and Fleming, who met when working together in Tankardstown House, in Co Meath, took an alternative route, realising a long-held dream of owning their own restaurant in West Cork where Krawczyk grew up. 

Pooling savings, they leased a former pub that had lain idle for some years, doing all renovations and decorating themselves.

“We are a seasonal small business,” says Krawczyk, “we don’t have investors or backers, it’s just our own money and hard work. 

"From the start of Covid 19, we’ve always put the health of our staff and customers above everything else. We’ve done everything we’re meant to do, made it incredibly safe, all tables, 2m apart, everything. 

"I understand the Delta variant is serious but the communication with [the restaurants] is not being managed well at all and they don’t appear to realise it takes so long for restaurants to get set up for opening.

Preparation

“It takes weeks and weeks. We’ve been doing research and development on the new season’s menu, one day a week for the last six months, we need to do it every year, that’s using produce we pay for but get no return on. 

"We stopped doing takeout a month ago to test the menu and concentrate on staff training, including four new staff. We’ve got in new stock, new wines. Wines won’t go off but they were there to generate revenue and now that is more cash flow tied up.

“We’ve been pre-ordering stock, including expensive stuff like caviar and truffles which eats up cashflow, setting up standing orders with suppliers and producers and there is so much advance prep to be done. We have food that takes a week to get ready. 

"Stocks take a couple of days, pickling, preserving, you’re always doing something. I’ve made a load of charcuterie: Lardo, pancetta, salamis, coppa.

“Altogether, we’ve spent on food stock, wines, staff, training, uniforms, cutlery, tables, chairs, repainting the building. You do this every year, it is a necessary outlay and you have to factor it in as a cost, but you’re always aiming towards a deadline of opening, so you can start repaying that cost immediately.” 

It is not just Michelin Star-standard restaurants that take such time, effort and expense to reopen.

Effort and expense

Conrad Howard is a co-owner of the Market Lane Group of restaurants in Cork City which range in size from small (Orso, Elbow Lane, Michelin-recommended Goldie) to large (Market Lane, Castle Café).

“The cost of stocking the restaurants is a variable depending on size obviously. Market Lane which has been closed might be €30,000 whereas Orso has been serving takeaway so their figure would be a tenth of that. 

"Market Lane gave pallet loads of food to the local food bank at the start of one lockdown as the rug was pulled from underneath us — it was either that or dump it.

“As we own a brewery we understand exactly the impact a lack of orders has, even when these are internal orders, as we have been brewing in anticipation for the past month.

“Preparing staff for re-opening is the crux of the thing, for us at least. We have to inspire, train and lead our teams to provide the service we want. 

"We want to recreate a team in each restaurant and it is very difficult to do unless you start at least two weeks beforehand. We'd have been training for 10 days in advance, along with all of the hiring in preparation for opening outside. 

"To rev up for inside we would, in all venues, be looking to increase our colleague count in all departments. This involves interviews, trials, trainers, tests and invariably failures along the way.

“Overall, to go from a dark kitchen to a full restaurant takes approximately three to four weeks for the Market Lane/Castle Café-size operations and two to three weeks for the smaller venues.” 

Pre bookings

Pre-bookings have been flooding into restaurants all over the country ever since the July 5 date was first announced. While online reservation systems have become the norm, many will deal with cancellations in person, especially as uncertainty remains about a return date.

“We take bookings for two month periods at a time,” says Krawczyk. 

“Elaine is now going to have to call them all which could take a day or two. And we don’t know if we can offer dates in August and then do we have to find out whether they are vaccinated or not? That is not our place or role to be asking those kind of questions.” 

With industry professionals estimating as many as 20% of the workforce have quit hospitality for good as a result of Covid 19 and with over 1100 chef positions recently advertised throughout the country, this latest delay is directly impacting on staff restaurants have fought so hard to find or retain.

“I can’t say the Government haven’t been doing anything, the supports have helped with staff but we’ve been paying more to keep our staff on, we can’t lose them,” says Krawczyk, “they’re great people, great workers, that’s why we did do takeout, to keep them going.” 

Staff concerns

One prominent restaurateur speaking anonymously said: “The mental strain amongst the staff body at large is also immense. The monetary uncertainty of the job really isn't the biggest strain. 

"It is the uncertainty that at any stage our industry can be shut down without regard for the skills loss and departure of professionals who have decided job security won't be found in hospitality anymore. 

"We've tried our very best to professionalise the culture and present tangible prospects to entrants of all ages, but the cleaver that has been taken to the industry due to the pandemic has cut very deeply.” 

Another serious consequence of the delay is the impact on those producers and suppliers who provide the hospitality sector with their primary ingredients.

“There is an impact down the supply chain,” says Howard, “you know how long it takes to gear up, small producers around the country anticipating a huge demand, they can’t turn off the tap.

"The produce is in the grounds, the animals are in the fields or the sheds. It is very hard to unwind. It is so hard for us but equally hard for them. 

"We’re lucky we can do outdoor dining so we are not pulling the plug completely but volumes won’t be what we anticipated. 

"We would have been in touch with growers, cheesemakers, fishermen etc with a reasonable expectation that they would need to provide us with an extra 50% of product based on us moving back inside. That is now lost to them, along with the potential revenue lost to us."

Suppliers

For many, the relationship with supplies and producers is more than just business.

“I work with all my suppliers, producers and growers personally,” says Krawczyk.

“Take [grower] Bradley Putze, of Lisheen Greens - we’d planned stuff from last year that he was especially growing for me, I’ve done that with most of my suppliers. 

"It’s affecting him now, the stuff I’d be using on the indoor menu, I couldn’t necessarily use on takeout because it wouldn’t be cost efficient, they’re different types of menus, and its often too delicate and wouldn’t travel well in takeout food.” 

Perhaps it is because we associate ‘dining out’ with ‘leisure’, one of the first expenses to be struck off the list should our own personal finances be constrained, but there appears to be a curious failure to fully appreciate how vital the hospitality sector is to the economy, ever before considering its very real and tangible benefits on mental wellbeing as a superb facilitator of communal gatherings of family and friends.

At the peak of the season, factoring in part-timers and casual workers, the sector employs up to 250,000 and is an absolutely crucial part of the Irish tourism offering, the other of two largest native net contributors to GDP along with agri-biz. 

Accordingly, many believe the financial supports pandemic unemployment payment for employees, Covid Restrictions Support Scheme (CRSS), are insufficient.

“The supports are only covering half of our members’ outlay,” says Adrian Cummins, of the Restaurants Association of Ireland, “and we’re continuously falling deeper into debt. We called for a doubling of CRSS back in January and the Government turned us down. 

"CRSS only covers 50% of the cost for businesses paying rent. The average restaurant will cost about 20k to restock. Then there is legacy debt, warehoused Vat over the last two years, training staff. 

"We are getting to the position where our industry needs a major bailout like the banks were bailed out in the past. The longer we’re closed, the closer we are to that."

Seasonality

“Businesses just want to get their doors back open,” says Cummins, “they want to get back up and trading. Hotels are open, we’re delighted they are and we need to get all of the rest of hospitality aligned with them.” 

If there is one constant in the makeup of hospitality professionals, it is their absolute refusal to roll over and die.

“We’ll get inside again,” says Howard, “I know we will, this is a short-term issue for us, but there are businesses that were clinging on by their fingertips for July 5 so my heart goes out them at another delay. I know we’re lucky and I want to focus on the positives." 

“This makes it’s difficult,” says Krawczyk, “because West Cork is seasonal. It’s buzzing in the summer, we could sell four times the amount of seats but winter is much quieter. I only speak for myself and Elaine and our business, but it’s incredibly hard. 

"I know we have to keep everybody safe, so communicate properly and openly with us as an industry and let us know what you need, give us clarity, but long-term, we’ll get through it, we’ve got this far and we’re not going to give up.”