Courtesy Hamilton Hospitality
Keeping one restaurant afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic is hard enough. Add eight more, and one can imagine the challenge facing Paul and Wendy Hamilton, co-owners of Hamilton Hospitality restaurant group, which is now 100 percent employee-owned.
Though the restaurant group is now in a better position, the pandemic has come with its challenges. “We had to lay off all of our hourly employees,” says Paul Hamilton, noting that chef Jack McMurray cooked meals for the laid-off staff twice per week at the time. “We told them we would bring them all back on, and we did.”
The restaurant group also switched its salaried managers to hourly and “kept them working the entire time," says Hamilton. "We divided them into small groups of two or three so they could stay socially distant, and then we divided them into teams of expertise.” With the restaurants' dining rooms temporarily closed this spring, the teams completed such tasks as outdoor maintenance, detail cleaning, refinishing wood, painting, programming, and recipes and training materials. “We took the opportunity to rehab pretty much every facility, with the exception of the steakhouse, which was already pretty brand new," says Hamilton. "We spent two months doing all of that and monitoring what was going on in the city and the county.”
“Then I got involved with the city to help determine what the criteria would be to reopen for dine-in service,” Hamilton continues, noting that restaurants have long managed sanitation-related concerns. “The other big deal was the spacing,” says Hamilton. “If we can put the tables 6 feet apart, that’s better than a grocery store can do, because you can’t control people walking past each other in the aisle. And the last thing was to wear a mask, so we felt that all of our team members including chefs, kitchen staff, and front-of-house staff should all wear masks.”
Hamilton advocated for physically separating tables with plexiglass and relaxing the permit requirements on dining outside. Employees at all Hamilton Hospitality locations have made it a part of their routine upon arriving at work to check their temperature, go through a screening, complete a survey, and wear a mask at all times. There are contactless payment solutions, and menus are either single-use or paperless. Surfaces are wiped down every 30 minutes.
This new normal requires a lot of work implementing safety procedures, but Hamilton says it's well worth it. “We’re doing it to keep everybody safe and to try to slow the spread of what is obviously a very contagious disease,” says Hamilton, adding that it's in the best interest of all dining establishments to maintain high safety standards. "Guests are going to go where they feel comfortable and safe," he says. "If they don't feel safe, they're not coming back.”
Among the first restaurant groups to reopen in the city, Hamilton Hospitality opened its locations gradually over the course of a week. “Dinners during the week were about half of what they normally were," Hamilton recalls. "Dinners on the weekend were probably about 75 percent.” The past few weeks have been going well, he adds.
In the meantime, 21st Street Brewers Bar has been hosting virtual beer dinners. Virtual cooking competitions featuring the sous chefs allow guests get to vote on their favorite dishes. And on July 22 at 6 p.m., Hamilton Steakhouse’s parking lot will also play host to the socially distanced Backyard BBQ Beef Extravaganza and Chef Demonstration, in which executive chef Brett Buettner will demonstrate cooking methods for five classic cuts of beef.
Moulin Events and Meetings is also reopening July 16. Hamilton says there are plenty of parties planned, though there are much stricter rules about these types of gatherings. All guests have to wear masks, and buffets are no longer allowed. The venue will operate at a reduced capacity.
In a "state of the restaurants address" email sent to all team members, the Hamiltons said that all restaurants are currently operating profitably. In addition, the group has secured ample financing, including a PPP loan and SBA loans for each business, and there is no additional debt in the foreseeable future.
"We are in a very strong financial position to weather this storm for years to come," the letter noted, adding that other opportunities exist to strengthen their position. Hamilton challenged staffers to think outside the box and identify trends moving forward. "It is important that we set an example for the rest of the industry," the letter noted, "on how things should be during this reopening phase."
