A slew of previously closed restaurants will reopen this weekend after receiving funding from the Paycheck Protection Program. The federal program, part of the $2.3 trillion CARES Act, offers small businesses up to 2.5 times their monthly payroll costs at a 1 percent interest rate. If restaurants follow a specific set of guidelines, including using at least 75 percent of the funding for payroll costs over eight weeks, the loan will be forgiven in full.

We spoke to folks behind several restaurants about their plans to reopen following the disbursement of PPP funds, and most have different understandings of what the requirements are to get the loan forgiven — some believed they had eight weeks to use the funds, for example, while others believed they had to begin paying staff again before that eight-week time period ended. The lack of clarity on the requirements — and what happens if you can’t meet them — for loan forgiveness has been widely reported.

After receiving PPP funds, The Goodyear House will once again serve takeout and delivery this weekend, kicking off with a pig picking grand re-opening party on Saturday. Pork shoulders will be sold by the pound for $12, with sides of pickled veg and spaghetti squash salad also available for purchase. Saturday also serves as the return of the full Goodyear House menu.

Executive chef Chris Coleman says the timing of the restaurant beginning service again was based on their understanding of the loan’s forgiveness terms.

“Obviously we would have rather waited to be able to reopen our doors fully, even under restrictions, and have people inside the restaurant, and have PPP money to be able to to bring the staff back on and help us get back on our feet,” he says. “That’s just not the way the program was was designed the first go around.”

Also opening for curbside this week is Hello, Sailor, the Cornelius lakefront restaurant owned by Katy and Joe Kindred of Kindred Restaurant. Both restaurants received PPP money, though the Kindreds aren’t rehiring their full staff just yet. They plan to run Hello, Sailor with a small staff now that so many boats are heading out onto the lake on weekends. Once the Kindreds get more direction from the government on how and when the funds need to be used, they’ll look at next steps concerning bringing their staff back on.

“We just sort of want to make sure that we understand what it’s going to look like when all this is over, and that’s not ’til June 30,” Katy Kindred says. “So the last thing we want to do is get ahead of our skis and make make the wrong decision with a moving target. So we are sort of waiting and seeing.”

They’ll be outfitting Hello, Sailor with large signs both in the parking lot and along the docks with instructions for curb-side pickup, as they’ve done at Kindred.

Rare Roots Hospitality is reopening most of its restaurants as well. Dressler’s, Dogwood, and The Porter’s House will resume serving carry-out meals, while Fin & Fino will reopen at a later time, serving family-style meals. We spoke to Jon Dressler in our kick-off PPP question-and-answer series, and his plan was to get his staff paychecks again as soon as possible but not reopen the restaurants at that time. All of Dressler’s restaurants stayed open for takeout initially, with all of the proceeds going to staff, but closed as the number of coronavirus cases in Charlotte spread.

“As my guys grew increasingly less comfortable doing [takeout], we all went home a couple of weeks ago,” Dressler said this week in a panel discussion we moderated about the future of the restaurant industry in Charlotte. “As it normally is with restaurant workers, we can only sit on the sofa for so long until we get completely bored out of our minds. I figured everyone would go home for a couple weeks, and the guys started calling me, saying, ‘Hey, can we do something?’ So we are opening back up on Thursday.”

Also opening for takeout after closing previously are Halcyon and Fern, under the Something Classic restaurant group. The group confirmed they received PPP funding, but declined to share details on how the loan forgiveness program played into their decision to reopen.

With most restaurants rehiring the same staff they laid off, few anticipate a slow start or a need for training. The Goodyear House, which was only open for a few weeks before the shutdown occurred, will be using this time as something of a soft opening, as the restaurant was immediately slammed upon opening its doors in February.

“We are going to try to take this time to iron out things that need to be ironed out, get restarted and hopefully, you know, use this free money essentially to put a little bit of a nest egg in the bank so that once that eight-week period is over, we can get fully reopened and we’ve got some liquidity with that cash flow. So that’s that’s why we’re opening right now. And that’s why I assume a lot of people are probably opening right now.” —Kristen Wile

 

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