Dining out in the Valley — will it ever be the same? Even in recovery, restaurants are facing new challenges

BOARDMAN — On the night of March 15, 2020, Matthew Kirby couldn’t sleep.

Ohio had just become the first state to shut down bars and restaurants due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Kirby — a sales manager at a Cleveland-based food distributor — channeled his nervous energy into creating 11 Facebook groups to help local restaurants share their takeout menus and new hours with residents of various counties.

A year later, "Mahoning County Take-Out" has more than 21,400 members and is still very active, attracting nearly 1,500 posts in the past month.

But, in the past 14 months, the nature of the posts has changed.

At the beginning of the pandemic, restaurants posted their takeout menus. Now, customers are taking to Facebook to rant about the quality of service.

With some context, the group’s content serves as a microcosm of the challenges the food service industry has weathered throughout the pandemic. From operational adjustments to staffing issues, restaurants in the Mahoning Valley have changed — in many cases, permanently.

Shift to takeout

Before the pandemic, people saw takeout as the domain of fast-casual chains and pizza shops. Kirby said.

“When the pandemic hit, it was like: 'Wait a minute. It’s no big deal to go to a nicer restaurant — a Vernon’s or a Cafe 422 — and still get a very good prepared meal and take it home to feed your family.' And restaurants stepped up their game with packaging, the menu selections, so that the food can travel better,” Kirby said.

The shift was aided by delivery apps like GrubHub, DoorDash and UberEats.

As gig-delivery services grow in popularity with younger diners, “ghost kitchens” and “cloud kitchens” — where established restaurateurs offer mixed-up carryout menus under a new name — are gaining traction, said Homa Lily Moheimani, spokesperson for the Ohio Restaurant Association.

Some new establishments have opted for a “groceraunt” model, offering food service and prepackaged goods, like Napa Grocery, which is taking over the former Peaberry’s building along Boardman-Canfield Road in Canfield, or Lariccia’s Italian Marketplace along Southern Avenue in Boardman — “sustainable” locations with “limited waste,” Moheimani said.

“There’s so many different types of niche markets out there and people love to purchase local [goods] from people that they know,” she said.

COVID-19 surges throughout the year have solidified the necessity of takeout for people who find it too uncomfortable to dine in restaurants.

"It's helped a lot of restaurants get their bottom dollar made,” said Boardman Township Administrator Jason Loree.

Another reason carryout has remained popular is restaurant service has suffered, Kirby said. That’s because it’s gotten increasingly difficult for restaurants to retain staff.

Staffing issues

Theories circulating on social media postulate restaurants are understaffed because former food service workers are making more money simply collecting extended pandemic unemployment.

But that doesn’t bear out, Kirby argued. He points to unemployment rates.

In January 2020, Mahoning County had an unemployment rate of 7.1 percent. This past February, it was 7.2 percent.

“Part of the staffing issues are the folks are going back to work, but they’re not going back to work in the food industry,” he said.

And understaffing can weaken customer service, which could contribute to local residents hesitating to return to in-person dining, Kirby said.

People working as servers and line cooks took jobs elsewhere when faced with the prospect of being overworked at a restaurant where they’re vulnerable to exposure to COVID-19.

“The restaurant worker has been hit harder than most” by the health and financial issues acutely exacerbated by the pandemic, Kirby added.

Moheimani said restaurateurs are now incentivizing workers to come back and fill out their schedules by offering hiring bonuses, developmental or career opportunities or paid time off.

“Everybody is looking at anything and everything to encourage people to come and work for the restaurant industry,” she said. “This is not unique to big chains and restaurants.”

A ‘tough business’

About 1 in 5 Ohio restaurants have closed since the onset of the pandemic — either temporarily or for good — and that’s comparable to national trends, Moheimani said.

Cultivate: a co-op cafe, the eatery on Youngstown's North Side, shut its doors Dec. 18.

In a Facebook post, the cafe wrote: “It was impossible to predict the challenges this pandemic would bring. We did everything we could think of to preserve our business but it has become increasingly clear that it isn’t feasible to continue at this time.”

Even without a global pandemic, the restaurant industry is “a tough business” and many eateries fail within their first year, Moheimani said. Operators juggle payroll, workers compensation, food safety certifications and other overhead costs.

But Mahoning Matters found several in the area that fired up their kitchens for the first time in 2020, amid COVID-19 — begging the question: Why?

“Restaurant owners and operators are true entrepreneurs at heart,” Moheimani said. “Entrepreneurs are very driven, very creative people. They really see obstacles more as opportunities.

“The restaurant industry is one of the last industries where you can come in with no experience and have no barriers and start as a dishwasher and end up owning your own restaurant. They see it as an opportunity to invest in their own community through the restaurant industry.”

New restaurant owners “have a great position to see the way to do things right,” Kirby said. “You’ve watched everybody else do it a different way for the past year-plus. You can absorb everything that you’ve seen and observed and now you can put it into your plan for your restaurant.”

Upcoming dining options in the Mahoning Valley include a fast-casual Indian spot and a pizza shop from the former owner of the Kitchen Post.

Some new owners might also have gotten lucky snatching the location of a closed business during the pandemic for cheaper than they would have otherwise.

There is, of course, the enthusiasm of diners itching to go out when things return to normal.

Under the $28.6 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund created by the American Rescue Plan COVID-19 relief package, food- or drink-serving establishments could be eligible for up to $10 million in grants or $5 million per location after applying to the U.S. Small Business Administration.

But “restaurants are still concerned,” Moheimani said. “When you lose business or events and holidays, that’s not something you can make up. You just hope you can get some relief and turn a corner.

“There’s still a long road to recovery ahead,” she said. “Behind every closed door and closed business, these are real people.”

Brunch to go

Of all the reasons Tracy Symons’ restaurant could have failed, she hadn’t considered a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic.

Symons was in the middle of gutting the former Perkins Restaurant along East Main Street in Canfield, transforming it into her breakfast spot Brunchin’ It Up. She bought the spot in 2019, but the commercial disarray caused by the COVID-19 pandemic caused her to reconsider.

She put the property back up for sale early last month and just recently closed a sale.

It was supposed to be Symons’ first foray into the restaurant industry.

“It’s just something that I kinda always wanted to do and had an opportunity to do it,” she told Mahoning Matters. “For the health and safety of my family … we said, ‘Sorry, it’s really a bad time.’ We parked everything, put everything on the back burner.”

Canfield “needed a breakfast place,” Symons thought. She ran a food trailer in the parking lot outside while renovations were underway, so diners could sample the talent she was bringing — but she’s now selling that, too.

Brunch means mimosas, so Symons also sought a liquor license from the state Department of Commerce, but the process stagnated for six months.

Then came the state’s pandemic shutdown in spring 2020. Symons and others thought it may last only a few weeks, she said, more than a year later.

By the time Gov. Mike DeWine’s administration began a cautious reopening of the state’s economy, new construction had become “impossible” to schedule and the cost of building materials was “astronomical,” she said. Her permitting fell weeks behind.

Symons said she “tried to hold out as long as possible,” but it all wasn’t worth it.

“Every step of the road was more and more frustrating,” she said. “At some point you gotta cut your losses and work from there.

“Life goes on and hopefully down the road we could do something with it.”

Symons said she doesn’t currently have any new designs on her own eatery, but didn’t rule it out years down the road, if the economy has settled. She’s now just focusing on being a mom to her daughters, who are still young.

“I have other things to fall back on, but I feel horrible for anybody trying to start something new,” she said.

Surging forward

Six weeks ago, DeWine predicted a somewhat normal spring. In the past month, however, pandemic trends have been headed in a different direction.

DeWine promised Ohio can reopen when it reports an average of 50 new cases per 100,000 people for two weeks. Three weeks ago, the state reported 146.9 new cases per 100,000 people. Two weeks ago, that average rose to 167.1. Last week it was up to 183.7.

Kirby points to Easter celebrations.

“The Easter holiday was a very good barometer or [people’s willingness to] go to church or go out,” Kirby said. “Now mom is vaccinated or dad is vaccinated, so you brought the family over for Easter dinner ... They haven’t seen each other in a year. A lot of cases are going up because of carelessness.”

Some people are “over it,” Kirby said. Others are watching the numbers and sticking to their takeout routines.

Boardman Township's Loree is hopeful the vaccination effort will tamp down on surging case numbers.

"My hope is that they figure out what they need to do with the [Johnson & Johnson] vaccine and get back to really getting folks immunized quickly so these upticks are mere blips in the overall recovery,” he said.

When it comes to dining out trends, Kirby has his eye on May 9.

“It will be interesting to see when we come into the Mother’s Day holiday, which is actually the busiest food service holiday of the entire year,” he said. “You’ve only got one [mom] and whether she’s vaccinated or not, are you going to take the chance of bringing your family over to mom … or having brunch at a local place? It’s going to be interesting to see.”

This story was originally published April 15, 2021 at 4:52 AM with the headline "Dining out in the Valley — will it ever be the same? Even in recovery, restaurants are facing new challenges."