Ch-ch-changes…
The Sink has been around since 1923. Ironically, change is the only true constant we’ve seen in our 97 years. COVID-19 has brought a sweeping change to the restaurant world–and really every small business that we know of.
We have faced a lot of challenges in almost 100 years in business including construction to our historic building and construction projects on the University Hill area, emotional and damaging riots on The Hill, alterations in liquor laws and social expectations, the disastrous flood of 2013, and many more. COVID-19 is something we never expected to face and has been our hardest challenge so far.
Effects of COVID-19
A small peek into the restaurant world you don’t see. Each chair in our storage locker is thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. Everyone who has supported us and other small Boulder businesses is keeping our community alive.
Like most, if not all restaurants across the nation, the Sink was legally mandated to close its dining room due to the coronavirus in March of 2020. 90% of our employees were laid off.
In late May 2020, restaurants in Boulder were allowed to reopen their patios and dining rooms with social distancing measures in place. We were grateful to be able to bring back a considerable amount of our original staff.
The University Hill Commercial Area Management Commission also worked hard on new landscaping and beautification projects as well as a street closure to make the Hill safe, vibrant and inviting as restaurants reopened for dine-in service. Pennsylvania Avenue between The Sink and Cafe Aion was closed to allow both restaurants to expand our patios into the street. This is allowing us to serve more guests safely and from a distance.
We have seen a good turn out with guests trusting us and coming in to dine. We have also seen a large increase in the amount of to-go food that has been ordered since the pandemic began. We hope to continue making take away food and drinks part of the new normal moving forward and plan for The Sink to stay as a go-to choice for locals in Boulder.
Did you know that ordering pickup saves us and every other restaurant up to 30% over 3rd party delivery apps like UberEats, DoorDash, and GrubHub? Picking up your order benefits our businesses tremendously. And as an added benefit, you can get any alcoholic beverage to-go–when picking up!
Safety
Due to suspensions of activity and restrictions on business, from the beginning, we wanted our guests to know that we were taking every possible precaution and safety measure when ordering, preparing, and serving food. Because most people were quarantined to their homes, we used social media to reach most of our customers. We've seen things change every day and sometimes multiple times throughout the day. To keep everyone on the same page, social media has been a great tool to share updates about our business.
We have always taken pride in our high standards for cleanliness, food safety, and quality. We continue to monitor the advice and guidance from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and our local government and adapt our procedures as we learn more about COVID-19. Our diligent team members, managers, and support staff have been implementing a number of extra precautions in addition to our already established daily sanitation, food handling, food storage, cleaning, and handwashing procedures.
Adapt, Adapt, Adapt
Since we have always been a primarily dine-in location, we have learned to be more creative with our online presence and using QR codes to link to our menu online. Most of all we are learning how to adjust with speed.
“Literally since March 17, we’ve been adjusting every single day if not a couple of times a day the whole way through, and the workload is three times whatever it was,”
Owner, Mark Heinritz sighed in an interview with Chandra Xu with Six Feet Forward
In one long breath, Heinritz lists all of the things he considers each day now:
“How many people do we need? How many people do we need to rehire? How many people are going to show up? What are their expectations going to be? Are we being clean enough even though we’re being super clean? Are people nervous or not nervous? Are they scared that the table next to them isn’t wearing a mask while they’re eating? What’s the weather going to be? Is it going to rain on us when we have a full patio? What do we do with all these people if it rains right now?”
Without the PPP funds, we would be in a different situation. Although the process was stressful, confusing and caused us to stagger in its implementation, it has been a vital lifeline for our independent restaurant and we are grateful.
What Can You Do To Help Our Community?
Please, support your local restaurants and support more funding to get them through the winter. Without small independent businesses, our choices will be limited to what the shareholder supported businesses dictate.
