Pizza Today - March 2021 - 14

MAN ON THE STREET

SCOTT WIENER

Keeping the Doors Closed

hen restaurants started closing
their doors back last March, all
anybody could talk about was
when they could reopen. More than
11 months later, we're finally starting to get
optimistic with several vaccines in distribution and stronger governmental focus on
tackling the virus. Municipalities are even
lifting restrictions, giving restaurants the
opportunity to shift back to indoor seating.
Sounds like we're on our way back to normalcy except for one pesky issue - lots of
pizzerias aren't interested in going back.
I knew something was up when I saw an
Instagram post by Derrick Tung of Paulie
Gee's Logan Square in Chicago. Having just heard the news that Chicago had
lifted its ban on indoor dining, he made

an official announcement that his pizzeria
would remain takeout only. He detailed
his reasoning in the post as a method of
communicating to both customers and
colleagues. Beyond the obvious health and
safety concerns, Derrick also reasoned that
opening with Chicago's restrictions (25
percent capacity or 25 people, whichever
is less) would actually cost more than it
would profit.
That all sounded reasonable to me, but I
needed to find out if others in the industry
shared Derrick's perspective. Within
minutes of dropping a post in the " Pizza
Assassins " Facebook group, I had a flurry
of responses and every single one of them
agreed that staying closed was the way
to go. Michael Androw of E&D Pizza

Company in Avon, Connecticut, even went
so far as to remodel his entire dining room.
He ripped out all his seating, shifted the
counter 30 feet, and extended his kitchen.
Although he's still coming to terms with
becoming a DELCO restaurant, the
40 percent increase has made that an easier
pill to swallow.
Patti and Jim McGraw of Good Eats
on 6 in Eastham, Massachusetts opened
their shop just a few months before
COVID hit, so they've been riding the
rollercoaster even more than most. A
health inspector saw how well they're
doing with curbside pickup and mentioned
that most restaurants in their situation
wouldn't benefit by opening up for seating.
The risk of having to shut down for two
weeks in the event of an infection could
crush an already precarious situation.
As frustrated as I may be that I can't
walk into a pizzeria and sit down, I actually
have no current desire to do so. And I'm
not alone. Kevin Houghton is open at
25-percent capacity at his Fox's Pizza Den
location in Wilmore, Pennsylvania, but
very few people are dining in. Bill Carmine
Cornell at Carmine's Wood Fired Pizza in
Joplin, Missouri, is open with 50 percent
max capacity and says his dine-in has been
extremely slow while takeout is up. Even in
NYC, where going to restaurants is an
important part of our culture, people
choose to stay in. Paulie Gee's in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, tried to open with 25-percent capacity but the public just wasn't
interested in dine-in at the moment.
There's quite a bit of chatter about how
this will change restaurant culture forever,
but I still see people returning to pizzerias
once we're out of the woods. We're ordering so much takeout because it's the only
option. Sure, it will take some time to get
back to pre-pandemic behaviors like sitting
elbow-to-elbow in a tiny pizzeria, but I do
think we'll get there. After all, the last pandemic was followed by the roaring '20s! ■

SCOTT WIENER is the founder of Scott's Pizza Tours in New York City and SliceOutHunger.org Instagram: @scottspizzatours

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Pizza Today - March 2021

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