Pat Fontaine started serving food at civic club meetings, including the local Rotary Club, when he was 8 years old at the motel and restaurant his family owned in Pascagoula.
He “performed about every duty that you can in a restaurant and motel setting,” and the establishment had to weather a few hurricanes over the years, but Fontaine told Columbus Rotary Club in its virtual meeting Tuesday that he “could have never imagined” a crisis like the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
“The devastation from a hurricane was quite severe and the setbacks difficult, but you could always begin your recovery efforts the next day, and that’s just not the case with coronavirus,” said Fontaine, who has been executive director of the Mississippi Hospitality and Restaurant Association since January 2019.
Consumers had “more dining options prior to the pandemic than have ever been available,” from food trucks to convenience store meals, he said. Now the “new normal” for restaurants in Mississippi is that some — about 11 percent — will close permanently, and the rest will operate differently than they did before the pandemic.
The restaurant industry used to employ about 10 percent of the state’s workforce but now employs “half the level it did two months ago,” and it might take several years for the industry to return to the $5.1 billion in sales it used to generate, Fontaine said.
About 30 to 40 percent of restaurants, both nationwide and in Mississippi, closed at least temporarily since the pandemic began in March. Dine-in sales had already declined 40 percent before Gov. Tate Reeves issued a “shelter in place” order from April 3 to April 27 that required restaurants to restrict their services to drive-thru, carry-out and delivery.
Restaurants are now allowed to provide 50 percent of their dine-in service capacity to groups of six people or fewer with everyone six feet apart, and employees that interact with customers must wear protective face masks. However, some restaurants will not open their dining rooms yet if they cannot turn a profit that way, Fontaine said.
“The focus is on off-site sales, and this crisis has expedited the move to this focus,” he said. “Restaurants are looking at their pickup and delivery business, event catering and mobile units, (or) food trucks. They have to look at ways to generate sales to offset the decrease in their dine-in business, and you will see that continue to be a trend.”
Impact on local restaurants
Anthony’s, a Cajun-Creole steakhouse in West Point, was frequently “packed to the gills” before the pandemic and therefore did not allow carry-out at certain times, owner Ray Hamilton told The Dispatch. Hamilton also owns Magnolia’s at the Ritz. He closed the dining rooms in both restaurants on March 15 out of safety concerns and reopened them Tuesday, and both provided carry-out and curbside pickup in the meantime.
“Before, we’d fill up and take reservations, and now we have specific time slots,” he said. “That will allow us to get as many people in (as possible) in a controlled manner so we can follow the safeguards.”
The sharp increase in carry-out business at Proffitt’s Porch in Columbus had customers and employees “running steps like crazy” since the restaurant is upstairs, owner Campbell Proffitt told The Dispatch. The restaurant has done some delivery but not much, mostly because it doesn’t have “the staff or the vehicles” for it, Proffitt said, but he will consider expanding the service.
Fontaine said some restaurant owners fear bringing their entire staff back to work in case they have to lay off their employees again due to a lack of dine-in business. Proffitt’s Porch usually hires new employees for the summer, mostly college students, but Proffitt said he has not made those hires this year for financial reasons.
Hamilton said he is bringing both the staff and the menus back to both his restaurants in phases. He completely closed both restaurants in mid-March out of safety concerns and reopened them Tuesday.
“I didn’t feel comfortable being in there (in March), so I wasn’t going to ask my staff to be in there,” he said.
Proffitt’s Porch reopened Thursday, the first day it could open for dine-in service, and has been receiving customers since then, Proffitt said.
“I wish someone could give us an answer as to when we can open back up to full capacity,” he said. “I’m already experiencing some issues with customers wanting to gather in groups larger than six, and we’ve had several reservations already for groups larger than six. We sat the tables separately, so there were only six at a table, but the customers don’t like that.”
Despite the hardships facing the industry, Fontaine said he is confident that many restaurants will return to serve loyal customers, provide first jobs to young people and be a source of togetherness for friends and family.
“We are an industry of problem solvers,” he said. “We deal with a variety of problems each and every day, from a broken dishwasher to a food delivery not being made, so simply give us time (and) we will figure it out.”
Proffitt said the ability to figure it out will determine which restaurants survive and which do not.
“The businesses that can navigate this time, I think, are going to be few and far between, honestly,” he said.
Tess Vrbin was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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