Working hard but hardly working: Pandemic wreaks havoc on service industry

Second of five parts.

After working side by side as executive chef and general manager for two years, Joe DiFrancesco and Dan Wilder were left unemployed in October when Kingston’s Bar Rustic closed due to the financial strain caused by the pandemic restrictions.

Bar Rustic became one of dozens of restaurants permanently closed on the South Shore due to the devastating effects of the pandemic, which left service workers scrambling for unemployment benefits and searching for new jobs.

The pandemic has forced the closure of many businesses in the service industry and left others waiting to see if they can survive. Bars and nightclubs are still not allowed to open, and travel restrictions continue to limit the business of hotels. And while the state continues to reduce pandemic restrictions, including allowing the recent return of live music, many businesses continue to struggle.

More: South Shore venues start 'slow and orderly' return to hosting live music

DiFrancesco, who lives in Rockland, left his job for paternity leave last March 14, days before Gov. Charlie Baker shut down restaurants and bars to in-person dining to minimize the spread of the coronavirus. He said business was slowing down in the weeks leading up to the eventual lockdown as concerns over the virus heightened.

September 2020 Bar Rustic at Kingston Collection has closed

March 2020: Local restaurants scramble to minimize impact from virus outbreak

“I remember very clearly calling Joe and he was like, ‘I’m trying to bring a baby home in a pandemic. I can’t help you right now,’” Wilder said. “And just ... I didn’t know if that was the last time I’d ever talk to Joe, to be honest. I mean, I knew I would talk to him again, but I didn’t know if that was the last time I’d professionally talk to Joe. So you know, it’s scary, uncertain times.”

While DiFrancesco and Wilder were initially waiting to be called back to work as their spouses remained employed, at the beginning of October they found out the restaurant was shutting down and they would be joining the hundreds of thousands of people completely cut from the workforce.

In March and April, Massachusetts businesses reportedly cut 690,000 positions, which equates to about 18 percent of the workforce before COVID-19 hit.

November 2020: Massachusetts jobless rate falls to lowest level since COVID-19 pandemic hit

Looking ahead into the unknown

The closing of Bar Rustic led the pair to a greater uncertainty about their future, Wilder said. They wondered whether they could count on the restaurant industry for long-term jobs.

In September, the Massachusetts Restaurant Association told The Patriot Ledger that 20 percent of Massachusetts restaurants closed due to the pandemic.

September 2020: Will South Shore restaurants survive the cold weather? Only time will tell

“There was just so much uncertainty ... for everyone, not just us,” Wilder said.

To receive unemployment benefits, Wilder and DiFrancesco had to stay in contact with their employer, so when Bar Rustic closed, they had to look for new jobs and then considered opening a food truck, which they had initially thought of during the summer of 2020.

They decided to open a truck called Just the Dip, and after months of planning and seeking sponsors, they attended their first event, at 10th District Brewing Co. in Abington last week.

DiFrancesco said he and Wilder are two of the luckier ones. He said many of the Bar Rustic cooks were put in “impossible” situations.

“I was lucky enough to have a savings,” DiFrancesco said, “My wife had a job. I had health insurance and benefits. A lot of people had a lot worse end of the stick than myself.”

Unemployment numbers spike

Unemployment numbers have been coming down slowly since a peak of nearly 18 percent of the workforce in June 2020. Unemployment, which had been at 2.8 percent, spiked to 16 percent in April, the first month of reporting after statewide shutdowns due to the pandemic, according to state data.

In August, the unemployment rate dropped to 11 percent, then 10 percent in September, and hovered around 7 percent in October, November and December. The state has not provided data for January or February 2021.

At the same time, the labor participation rate in the state has dropped from a pre-pandemic rate of 68 percent to about 64 percent. That number is tied to the number of people who stopped seeking work.

Although the unemployment rate continues to drop, it is still twice its pre-pandemic level.

Restaurants face new realities

Adrian Muir, owner of Shipwreck'd, at Pemberton Point in Hull, said he and his restaurant will be able to make it through the storm, but the how and when of operations have changed as the pandemic has profoundly changed commuting. Much of Muir's pre-pandemic business came from commuters grabbing a breakfast sandwich before they boarded the ferry to Boston.

"People quit riding the boat, they slept in more and we had more people grabbing a late breakfast," he said.

More: MBTA ferry cuts to start Jan. 23 amid reduced ridership

While the breakfast crowd dropped off, lunch picked up some of the slack. The one saving grace for Muir has been the relaxation of alcohol permits, which Muir now has. Normally getting a permit, or allowing for a change in seating, takes weeks or months.

"They cut out 90 percent of the red tape," he said.

Lodging takes a big hit

While restaurants have been the face of the pandemic's economic fallout, the lodging industry has been struggling in equal measure. At the beginning of the pandemic, many hotels, motels and inns closed entirely. The only people allowed to stay at them were health care workers.

More: Hotels across the South Shore close as expenses pile up during coronavirus pandemic

Lynda Ferguson runs the Inn at Scituate Harbor. In April of last year, she shut down after two elderly guests, displaced by floods and fires, were able to find permanent lodging. Not close enough to a hospital, there were no health care workers needing rooms. She reopened in June, hoping to get some business during what is normally the high season.

"We covered the bills and then some, and then in November things dropped off drastically," she said.

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With none of the business that normally comes with Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's, Ferguson closed again until this month.

That also meant the housekeepers, desk staff and herself were all furloughed. The bills kept piling up. The mortgage still has to be paid and the heat needs to be on to prevent frozen pipes, she said.

Ferguson said she has a few reservations, mostly health care workers who can't leave the state because of travel restrictions but who want a few days off. The desk staff is back at work, but just one housekeeper is back because there aren't enough guests to justify the hours.

Revenue last year was down 50 percent, but Ferguson said they will make it through relatively unscathed, even if it means putting off some improvements such as carpeting and new curtains.

Permanently closed

Many bars and restaurants permanently closed because of the pandemic as income dried up.

In Hanover, The Eating Establishment permanently closed on Christmas Eve after takeout-only sales barely covered costs and lease negotiations with the corporate owner, 7-Eleven, never happened. Even if the company had been willing to renew the lease, owner Stephen Matheny said he would have needed an accommodation on the rent until the end of the pandemic.

More: Pandemic, corporate landlords spell the end for Hanover's The Eating Establishment

Hingham Beer Works shut down in August after 10 years in the Hingham Shipyard. It was part of a string of brewpubs and a dedicated brewery in Lowell.

More: Hingham Beer Works permanently closes after 10 years

In Weymouth, the Hearth 'n Kettle closed after 23 years in August and sold the property to Weymouth restaurant owner Chris DiMambro.

More: Hearth 'n Kettle restaurant closes due to pandemic

In Hull, Joe's Nautical Bar will likely weather the pandemic because owner Mike McDevitt also runs a tugboat business. Bars have been closed since March 13 and still are not allowed to open because they are in the last phase of the state's four-part reopening plan, behind personal services and gyms. McDevitt recently sold memorabilia from the bar, partially to help pay the bills and partially because he gave up on attempts to open a Coast Guard museum.

More: Jo's Nautical Bar sells off décor to stay in business amid pandemic

At the same time, other restaurants are renovating with intentions of opening soon, such as The Sandbar, which took over the former Beach Front Pub in Hull.

More: Hull approves liquor license for new restaurant

Consumer habits change the nature of business

There have been some bright spots during the pandemic as consumers, unable to go out, change their eating habits.

One of those bright spots is Courtney Doyle's Clandestine Kitchen, a meal delivery service based in Duxbury.

When the first shutdown orders were issued, she sat down with her employees and everyone agreed to take a break for just under a month, reopening in April 2020. Doyle used that time to work on an online subscription meal service, which she was able to quickly launch.

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When Clandestine Kitchen's staff came back to work, corporate orders were nearly nonexistent because employees had been sent home, but their residential customers came back and new households quickly signed up.

Doyle said she realized her business model – delivering prepared meals and snacks – was tailor-made to the restrictions and demands of the pandemic. She soon bought two refrigerated vans to handle deliveries.

Doyle also took advantage of the federal Paycheck Protection Program, which helped pay employees before they had enough orders to cover a full day's work. Three workers left work because they lost child care when schools and day care closed, but Doyle was able to hire five more, including two chefs who wanted to continue cooking but outside a restaurant environment.

More: $1.3 billion in federal loans flow to South Shore companies

More: Small businesses struggle with paycheck loans during the pandemic

"Whenever a job was posted, we got hundreds of applications," she said.

Although corporate meals may be gone, event planners are turning to her company to provide meals for virtual galas, bringing some of the normal services associated with in-person fundraising events to virtual ones.

Doyle said she thinks that even after pandemic restrictions are lifted, her new residential customers will stay, especially when it means reducing how often they hear the question, "What's for dinner?"

Takeout dinners are not the only thing people want in a pandemic. They also want to garden.

Dan Smith, who owns D.H. Smith and Sons in Marshfield, sells landscaping supplies. When pandemic restrictions started last March, he had just opened a new facility. He said he was worried because the business makes most of its money for the year in just three months, but it turned out that he didn't have anything to worry about.

Sales of mulch, which he makes in Marshfield, and other gardening and landscape supplies increased dramatically, and he was able to hire four more people to handle the workload.

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Reach Reporter Jenna Manto at [email protected]. Reach reporter Wheeler Cowperthwaite at [email protected].

About this series:

The coronavirus pandemic upended the lives of everyone on the South Shore one year ago. From those in day care to those in nursing homes, no life looks the same today as it did in March 2020. Dozens of local businesses have closed, hundreds of South Shore residents have died, thousands of students remain out of school and tens of thousands face unemployment. March 10 marks the one-year anniversary of Gov. Charlie Baker's state of emergency order in response to the coronavirus pandemic, and we are looking back on a year of chaos and confusion with this five-part series.

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Working hard but hardly working: Pandemic wreaks havoc on service industry

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