March, 2020. States are shutting down restaurants. Thats an Industry Sector that switched all. When you look at big moments like that, how do you face it . What do you do . It was so not in our play book. Major d was telling people i know youre used to this, but thats a remarkable thing to have on a constant basis. People have been waiting for four hours. It was something i didnt have the strategy. We werent able to go to work or order food. No food in the Grocery Stores. But my Chicken Farmer saying now his business is wiped out and Big Box Stores are frantically trying to make deals with these guys. By the end of march, 2020, financial losses and Employee Burnout had taken a toll. Introduce yourselves. Did you close . We never closed. Which in retrospect probably would have been the smarter move for everybody. Because nobody knew what to do. Nobody knew what to do. I think our business was already on a lot of ropes. My per view showed me we were running on very archaic system. In New York City, Chef Esther Choi was equally shaken when the bottom fell out. We shut our doors. I had to quickly think of ways to recover. Business had been booming at chois Korean Hot Spot mock bar in the citys meat packing neighborhood. Were here on a weekday at the Chelsea Market and the place is packed. Always . Always. Cant wait to show you some tricks. Yeah. I want to see some of my favorite dishes. So this is where our noodles are made. Our rice bowls. We have a rice cooker here. All of these are kim chis, our topping for everything and our broth. This goes for 16 to 18 hours. Oh my god. We were doing our alltime highest sales ever. I planned to open three more shops. We were ecstatic. Business was booming. Killing it. Pandemic hits. Within a week it drops to 50 of sales and almost 0. My heart sank. According to the National Restaurant association, 110,000 restaurants closed by the end of 2020. Many of them permanently. What about staffing . It was extremely difficult. I had my core team. When the pandemic hit, we were the ones working. We cooked every single day. We were the ones running everything with no hourly staff. Reporter back in phoenix, the Staffing Shortage forced chris to cut the hours at his four restaurants. For me to write like, hey, were closing early tonight or were closed today, you know, because less days a week. Doesnt make economic sense. We cant pay everybody. More than three decades of Restaurant Jobs were lost, around 6 million jobs. You had two locations, this one in brooklyn. We were used to only the retail model. Then i realized we have to quickly change that to something more digital, more online. And so, we partnered up with a Company Called cook unity. And basically we were making meals that people can reheat at home. A Subscription Service where people order five to ten meals and it gets delivered. We were getting a check every single week. And it really helped us get through the pandemic. We had to change our entire Business Model to make that work. Now were doing over 15,000 meals a week on that platform today. What . Its now such a big part of my business. And what i realized is mok bar is not a restaurant, its a brand. Not only are we selling on cook unity, selling meals to gold belly, so thats how i revisited the whole model of the business. So chef, can you grab the noodles . And do you want to give that a little mix. Choi was able to reopen mok bar after two months, but its not the restaurant it was before the pandemic. You dont have counter seats here anymore. After the pandemic, i decided were just going to do Quick Service and our sales have gone up. What do you pickle those . So i sauce and rice vinegar. Do you ever think about having a full Service Restaurant . It is my dream to one day do that. I have over 100 employees. Right now the focus is making sure everyones mouths are fed. Chef bianco struggled with the changing times. What are we going to do . Stay home, youre still hungry. Were doing sauce packets, we are takeout only now. Thats all we could do. It was busy. I think busy is such not the barometer for wellness. Check out the dining room. With this Restaurant Operating at half capacity, bianco had no choice but to pivot. He focussed on other parts of his business. Local durham. If you can create things that have some stability in your life, like luckily i have a tomato business. Talk to me about that . Yeah. How old is that . 12 years. This is our little dining room. Some paintings of my dad up on the wall. Thats cool. I love that. Then he took a huge risk. We opened up the middle of los angeles in the pandemic. We have good people and use good things. Pretty simple stuff. I have to eat a pizza before i go. Yeah, man. Come on. Lets go. All right. How has it been in l. A. . Its about six years old. Its brand new. But when you take three years out for the pandemic. People show up everyday. Its crazy because the middle of the pandemic, when i say, oh, well do something downtown l. A. Anybody thats smart, thats the stupid as when you opened downtown phoenix. You picked a challenge. I do. But good restaurants go anywhere. Theyll find you. Yeah, totally. Whats the story here . Garlic. This is the story. I dont tell nobody but now they know. We dont charge any extra for it, but you can do half and half. Half rosa and half marinara. Thats nice. He says hes uncertain about the future, but thats the business. I think were adjusting to it still. You think the business is more challenging post pandemic than it was prior to the pandemic . Were more aware of it now. Thank you. We appreciate it. Thanks. Whats your future . My future is presumptuous. I prepare myself for tomorrow everyday. I start duct taping the yesterdays together. When we come back people across the country have reached out. What are you doing . How did you do that . Thats why they choose tmobile for business. Mlb partners with tmobile to not only enhance the fan experience, but to advance how the game is played. Aaa relies on tmobiles network to stay connected nationwide, so they can help get their members back on the road. And were helping pano ai innovate, to stop the spread of wildfires. Nows the time to see what americas largest 5g network can do for your business. jack were standing up for our right to be lazy. jan by sitting down. ronald and Reclining Back lyn we work fulltime and parent fulltime. lyns husband we will be reclined until further notice. andi its our right to let the dishes soak overnight. rob and to mow the lawn. Tomorrowish. ben we proudly declare that yes, we are still watching that. ariel and no, we wont be cooking tonight. damon we, the lazy, are taking back lazy. doreen . By getting comfy on our lazboy furniture. vo lazboy. Long live the lazy. My cpa told me i wouldnt qualify for the erc tax refund, so i called Innovation Refunds. Their team of independent Tax Attorneys will work with your cpa to determine if your company is eligible. [whip sound] take the first step to see if your Small Business qualifies. All right. How you guys doing . Hi. How are you . Its a tuesday afternoon. And acclaimed russianinspired restaurant in portland, oregon. Before the dinner rush, the staff gathers in one of the dining rooms. So this is quarter one, first three months of 2023 were looking at. But theyre not going over the dinner specials. Whats really meaningful, when you look at the percentage of sales comparative to last year, thats a huge jump. Theyre in a meeting with Owners Bonnie and Israel Morales who are discussing the restaurants finances. Yeah, uhhuh. One of the things that you guys do that i havent really seen a lot of is that you share your p l statements, profit and loss statements with your employees. Why . When youre faced with something really catastrophic and it turns your whole house upside down, you cant go back to old practices sometimes. You cant really put the house back together. We retained i think eight employees and had to terminate 48. 48 others. As Staff Shortages escalated during the pandemic, the husband and wife team reimagined their Business Model to address employee inequity. We were looking at the humanity of what were doing and what our employees are facing. They all lived with each other. The Dining Room Managers and the general managers are making less than the server and bartenders. When you go back and reenter this atmosphere again, you realize, we have an opportunity to change things. In 2022, the morales did away with tips instead charging a service fee. A they added Health Insurance and a Profit Sharing program. Three times a year they open their books to the staff. Were looking at all the sources of the sales and how we break them up. We want to make sure theres that transparency. Theres no way that there is that were walking away benefitting from this change. Main courses are here. This is your rabbit and clay pot. So you guys charge 22 service charge. How do you utilize it . You use it to pay your employees . We have a fixed starting wage. Our lowest hourly rate is 25 an hour. No matter where you work in the restaurant. No matter where you work in the restaurant. And it goes up from there. And we use the 22 service fee to help offset those costs. Because our total labor costs are far more than the 22 service fees. Right. Ive been in this business for a long time. I mean, you have occupancy costs. You have labor costs. And you have cost of goods. Goods, uhhuh. Those are the three big buckets. But, basically what youre saying is you probably have a 20 to 25 short fall when it gets right down to it and you need the consumer to pay for the short fall because thats just the way the business is. Is that fair . Thats absolutely fair. Another way to think about it is places that rely on tips are basically just subsidizing the wages. Just like youre saying, there are just buckets of money coming in, money going out. And you can rearrange it any way you want. In some ways you are asking the customer to subsidize. So we could say lets just fold it in. Im going to ask you the obvious question which im sure some of your customers asked you. Why dont you raise the prices . Thats because since we are an outlier, people at the end of the day, people price shop. And you think perception. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Its all about optics. Any pushback from your customers about this . So minimal its not even worth counting. Honestly, its positive. For even more clarity, the owners include a link on their menu that provides guests with more information about their new Business Model. Obviously theres two sides of the coin. Some customers think that they should not be charging this service charge. Some other restaurants say its 22 because otherwise im going to close and also please tip. So its right. It runs all over the place. So the bottom line is theres probably no definitive right way to do this. And i believe, this is just my personal opinion, is that we are literally a half a generation away from people paying what restaurants need to cost. Somebody who is 16 or 17 and hasnt started paying their own prices yet, i believe when they get to the age of when theyre going to start paying their own bills, the Sticker Shock is not going to be Sticker Shock. Its going to be the norm. But we have to get to that point. Right, absolutely. Everything costs so much more, you want to stay in business. You want your employees to do well. And also you like to make a living yourself. Basically, the Restaurant Business, as we know it, is fractured in many ways. Thats unfortunate. Yeah. And the thing is that if places like ours dont do this, we are going to see a huge regression in the kind of food that were able to provide for people. Is this working for you guys from a financial standpoint . Yeah. Were doing it more than a year. We have felt really great about how this is. Were still profitable. Hi there, welcome. Were still busy. You folks have everything you need . Are your employees happy . We have great retention. Hey, everybody. This is bobby. How are you guys doing . Good. What are you making . Herring under a fur coat . Herring under a fur coat . Im guessing you saw a lot of these every night. We have single handedly increased the Herring Consumption in portland by threefold. We do want to share more of the culture and the cuisine with people. Its so good. So we have the vodka that we Just Launched a few years ago. So were trying to build that up. This is the place to be for some vod karks right . Oh, yeah. We do pour a lot of vodka here. Our most popular infusion you should taste this actually, is our horse radish vodka. Oh, is this your own brand . This is our own brand. Their both topped. So i would encourage you to mix that in, let it melt and create its own sauce. Okay. We also sell our dumplings frozen for retail. Really . Yeah. We have a small but mighty little dumpling production space upstairs. So right now were just in the Portland Metro area, but were looking to expand that. Is that since the pandemic . You have to find new Revenue Streams and youre thinking what else can we do . Sure. This is all under the same Business Model and the same structure. So everyone who works at katcha in dumpling production or in vodka is all that same pay structure. When you see the p l, you see how many bottles of vodka is sold. This isnt just lip service. We feel very passionate about. People across the country have reached out. What are you doing . How did you do that . How did you make that jump . You think this is just a Natural Evolution . I feel like this is a see change in the restaurant industry. Hello. Welcome back. Were just running a restaurant. Coming up all of a sudden you guys have this demand that comes out of nowhere. What do you do . Or more. Thats why farmers new Car Replacement pays to replace it with a new one of the same make and model. Get a whole lot of something with farmers policy perks. Farmers mnemonic upbeat music awww. Awww. Awww. Nope. Constant Contact delivers the Marketing Tools your Small Business needs to keep up, excel, and grow. Constant contact. Helping the small stand tall. You tried. Limiting when it was okay. No tech behind closed doors. But social medias algorithms of addiction always won out. Its not your fault. Alone you cant stop it. Together, we will. We have a plan. Join us. hi need new glasses . Buy one pair, get one free at visionworks how can you see me squinting . I cant im just telling everyone . 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I want to see how they get it done. Lets go. Lets go. Lets do it. The Chief Marketing Officer for doordash. Pandemic hits. Nobody knows whats going on. Im in the Restaurant Business. Were panicking like everybody else. We dont know what to do. You start getting a lot of phone calls, is my guess. Correct. Those first three weeks were super chaotic. It wasnt clear food delivery was even allowed during the regulations. One of the things we knew right away is that restaurants were going to need platforms like ours to be able to stay open. We channelled all of our Marketing Dollars at the time into building a campaign called open to delivery. Were up on air six days after the stayathome orders were in place. When the pandemic hit, i had one highend restaurant in new york gato. And we decided to close almost immediately because we didnt know what was going to happen. Right. I didnt go down the road that most of my contemporaries did, which was be in business with a company like yours. Yep. A lot of my contemporaries would say im doing a ton of business on delivery but i cant make a lot of money during the commission rates. We cut commissions for local restaurants by 50 . By 50 . We built a product called instant pay. That allowed restaurants to get paid out the next day rather than waiting a week, waiting a month. Because they needed the funds immediately. Because cash flow was super critical. Lets go. Lets do it. Thanks. Critical for the survival of their restaurant partners. This is the line to pick up. Exactly. Like this deli, a familyowned Sandwich Shop been a new jersey staple since the 1940s. Taking away that commission rate, suddenly allows us to maintain our margins at a time when all of our other