this is Facing South Florida,
with Jim DeFede.
♪♪
Good morning.
I'm Jim DeFede, and
welcome to Facing South Florida.
A Happy Mother's
Day to all the moms,
but especially my
mom back in Brooking.
I love you, ma.
Now stay inside.
Okay, we're going to try
something a little different on
today's show.
South Florida boasts many of the
best restaurants in the country,
thanks to the talents
of some amazing chefs.
So, I asked three of them to
join me for a conversation about
the future of restaurants in
the age of the Coronavirus.
Michelle Bernstein is a James
Beard Award's winning chef,
who has had numerous
successful eateries,
including Michy's.
Last year she
opened Cafe La Trova,
in Little Havana.
Micheal Pirolo has been
described as a chef's chef for
his Italian cuisine.
Seven years ago he
opened Macchialina,
on South Beach.
And Timon Balloo was the
Executive Chef for Sugarcane,
before opening his heralded
name-sake restaurant Balloo,
last year in downtown Miami.
As you will hear, the restaurant
industry was never easy,
but today it's
nearly impossible.
MICHELLE: I've
always known this,
but the realization kind of
smacked me in the face
when this all happened.
Our business is
basically broken,
right, but it was
always kind of broken,
so when you really think
about the restaurant model,
per se, it doesn't
really make sense,
as you mentioned
our margins, right,
so they're so slim.
If we're making $.10 on
the dollar we're lucky.
All of our money
goes to our employees,
it goes to the farms, it
goes to the fishermen,
it goes to the purveyors, it
goes to the families of the
employees, and that's, that's
basically--why do we do it?
Because it's our love.
Cooking is
probably my first love,
right, and we have so
much passion for what we do,
and these gentlemen
obviously can speak to that,
because they are some of the
most passionate people I know,
aside from being
friends, but so,
we do it for the emotion.
We do it for the satisfaction
of seeing other people happy.
We don't do it for the money.
The franchises have learned
how to make money off of this
industry, and good
for them, you know,
but this is not something that
we do expecting ourselves to
make much profit
out of it, and sadly,
that's why we are broken, and
why we are really broken today,
and why a lot of
businesses will not come back.
MICHAEL: When we
opened Macchialina,
it was never in the conversation
about what we were going to make
financially off of it.
It was actually a
huge pay cut for me,
personally when I
opened Macchialina.
It was so we could do exactly
the restaurant that we wanted to
do, and create the experiences
that we wanted to create.
In retrospect, I think maybe I
should've listened to my mom and
stayed in school, but you
know that's hindsight now.
But yeah, these are just crazy
times and there's no model for
this, right, like everything
that worked before doesn't work,
and now it's just throw
stuff at the wall and
hopefully something sticks.
We do this thing and I
guess in retrospect,
even though the
media is a business,
the drive is art,
and art is subjective,
so when it comes down to
necessity and survival of the
fittest, you're trying to
see how many people will pay,
and justify your art as a value.
So, now, you know, we have
to just step back and the way
approach our businesses has to
be shifted into just survival
mode, and that's a whole
mindset for a lot of us,
because what has made us
successful is that artistic part
of our trade, and to, like
I was telling some friends,
to put a peg, you know, a square
peg in a round hole is exactly
what we're doing right now, and
we're trying to put band-aides
on our operations, but we're not
doing it as good as some of the
large chain restaurants
that have had this model,
some of pricing, and we cannot
compete with the price points,
so then we get into
value conversation.
You know is it, everyone is
economically affected by
this at this point.
Do they see the value
in supporting their
local restaurant?
Can they, even if
they're willing to?
How many times a
week can they support, you know?
So, it, we're thrown
into a dire situation.
We are expected as stewards in
our industry to look out for the
farmers and the
fishermen, as well as our staff,
but who's looking out
for us as the owners?
Well...
You know, I've heard
Michelle say things like,
I'm paying out of my own
savings accounts to people,
you know this local charity.
You know I don't think
people realize that,
and you know.
Let me ask this, let me just ask
a question of all three of you.
Have you tried to get
loans through the PPP Program?
Have you been successful?
Is it more of a nightmare?
Yeah, Michelle.
We were denied the first time,
and the second time around we
did get the loan,
so here's the deal, right.
So the PPP loan, and this
is made again for larger
franchises, right,
and big corporations,
so you probably know
all about the PPP loan,
but I'm just going to
throw this out there.
And I have to be
honest with you,
in the last two months that
we've been going through this,
I haven't seen
much of my husband,
because he's been on the
phone for 10 to 12 hours a day,
with bankers that we're
trying to connect with,
because we're not like
friendly with our bankers,
we're not like, hey Harry, how's
the banking business going?
That's not us.
We deal with these big
banks, and we're not on a,
you know first name basis, but
so we finally got it so we're in
our first week.
The second the money
hits your bank account,
you have eight weeks,
right, of that loan,
so we're down our first week,
we have to employ every single
employee that will come back,
that doesn't want to stay on
unemployment, which
in Little Havana,
90% of my employee is
Cuban, who is the worker,
right, they want to
get back to work,
right, so they all jump
back in, so they're all
working for me now.
I'm not open, and I don't know
when I'm going to be able to
open, right, so I'm planning,
so 75% of this money that we got
has to go to our
employees, right.
The other 25% can
go to our rent,
which by the way our landlord is
not giving us any type of break
in either one of
our spots, and then,
so I'm supposed to pay for the
employment of these individuals,
which I'm very
happy to do, trust me,
it fills my heart
that I can do this,
but what happens when
we're still not open,
and seven weeks go by,
right, and the money's gone.
And now what?
Do I tell these people they
have to go back on unemployment?
I'm never going to get them
back again if that happens.
We got denied the
first time as well,
and we just got our
loan, and some people are,
because it's calculated on
percentage of what you were
making, right, so some
people are turning us down,
because they're going
to stay on unemployment,
which then in turn is going to
make us responsible for paying
this money back, so,
and we're not open,
you know, so regardless of
whether it's free money or 1% or
3%, we're not open, and
we're not receiving any income,
so how are we going to then,
turn around and pay this money
back, you know?
We took the loan,
don't get me wrong,
and then we'll try
and figure it out,
slice it up as we can.
Now there are new loans.
I don't know if
you guys read today.
I was just reading in, I
think it was the The Times this
morning, that they're
coming up with new ideas,
new loans, new ways
of doing this PPP.
They haven't gotten
them through yet,
but that's all great, you know,
and it has to happen quickly,
because if not, what's going to
happen is we're going to lose
the independent
restaurant, right,
because the
franchises can go on.
I can't believe there's
not a stimulus for us,
considering we're 11 million
people out of work right now,
and there's a stimulus for
the airlines that have 750,000
employees, so okay fine,
there's no stimulus for us, yet.
There should be,
but there isn't one.
There was one written by
Rubio, didn't go through.
I think it kind of got
lost somewhere in the pile of
paperwork somewhere, so let's
say there's no stimulus for us,
we have millions of
people that are out of work.
What happens to the
independent restaurant.
If we can't evolve, which these
two guys that you're talking to
right now, have
evolved beautifully.
I don't know if
they're making any money,
we're probably all going to lose
money in the first six months,
to eight months, if we
can hold on that long,
but Timon is doing
beautiful take out food,
some of the best in the city.
Mikey is doing these meals that,
you can prepare at home with his
gorgeous pasta, you
know, and that's all great.
Is it sustainable?
I don't know, you
have to ask them,
but the thing is, if we
don't do something fast,
you're going to lost your
independent restaurant.
And then what are
you going to do?
You're going to have to go to a
huge franchise restaurant every
time you want to
propose to someone,
have a party,
celebrate someone's life,
you know, we're
going to lose it,
just like we lost retailers.
You know I remember years ago,
every small retail artisanal
store in Miami Beach was gone
because of the larger retailers.
Is this what's going to
happen to restaurants?
But if it does, you'd
better watch out everyone,
because we are a lot of people
and we are hungry and we need
work, and it's not so easy to
jump into another career path.
You all, each of you in your
answers to various questions
have touched on, you know
this notion of evolution,
how things are going
to evolve and change.
Can you see what this industry,
what your passions are going to
look like a year from now?
No.
I got into this industry
for a very specific reason,
right, to follow my
dreams and stuff,
and the fast casual
thing is not really,
so it's just a lot
of tough decisions.
Michelle, can you see
what the future looks like?
It's is pretty
foggy right now, Jim.
I'm so scared.
I've already heard from
about five friends of mine in
different states, and
they're not opening back again.
It's not worth it,
and so what do we do?
Do we become other
type of business owners?
Do we try to evolve and change
the way we ever did business.
Do we go into carpentry work?
I don't know, but
I am so terrified,
because so much emotion, our
whole lives we dreamt of this
moment of having
restaurants, right,
and because of a
basically a virus from a bat,
or whatever you think, however
you think it might've come
about, is going to
destroy us in 51 days.
I just, I think we're
all still shocked.
I'm just trying to get through
home schooling right now.
Well, I was going to ask.
Are any of you thinking
seriously about not reopening.
I've thought about it.
Have you?
Have you really?
Yeah.
I really have thought about it.
And to, you know and to continue
what the other chef said,
I, mine is foggy, and
I think we all share,
we're all in panic mode
and you become frantic,
and there's a surge of ideas,
and there's some good operators
and friends that you talk
about that say they're just
decompressing and using this
time to just stay closed and to
try to think of a
rational strategy,
there's others that
maybe can't do that,
and they just have to
try to survive somehow,
because we're fighters, and we
don't want to like Chef Mike
said, it's a blow to the gut,
and we just want to fight back,
and open somehow.
I don't think
anyone's doing great.
I think.
On takeout, you mean?
Yeah, with take out, or
just trying to survive now,
and like you said, it is foggy.
So, I mean I've been
working with the mayor,
Carlos Gimenez, as well as am
amazing group of restauranteurs,
trying to come
up with guidelines,
right, for when we re-open, and
those guidelines do not make for
a very entertaining evening out,
as far as what it used to look
like, you know.
So, this is, the
biggest problem is,
right, if and when we do open,
and goodness I hope most of us,
or all of us can, we are
going to have to become police,
the way that we have to police
people the way that they enter
our restaurants, the way that
they act in our restaurants.
We can only fill our
restaurants 25 to 50% capacity,
which, it's already
hard to make money.
People have to wear masks, the
foods will be delivered with
gloves on, you can only come
with your family or the group
that you're living
with to sit at one table.
Is that a fun dining experience?
I don't know, you know, I'm so
desperate to eat other people's
food, I'll do
anything at this point,
but I don't know.
The whole
experience will change,
but we don't know for how long.
I guess I just wanted to
get, I saw Michelle's reaction,
and I thought she was going to
break down there for a second,
when she heard Chef
Timon mention that
he might not re-open.
I saw a reaction
with you, as well.
When you hear someone, you know
one of your colleagues say that,
and you can understand it,
in the midst of this emotion,
you don't know up
from down right now,
but when you hear
someone say that,
what, how does that hit you?
I mean it's
heartbreaking, right.
Me, I'm a hopeless optimist,
which I think we all are,
and that's why we got
into this industry,
so I don't know.
I always think that it's going
to bounce back, but when?
What does that
timeline look like, right?
Like we're back in
September, okay,
and doing a decent amount of
our business that we were doing,
it's like okay, we, you know
we tightened our belt for the
summer, we got through it.
Is it December?
That's a different story.
Is it not going to
be until next year?
And then you're going to
see a lot of restaurants
close, right.
The longer this goes on, the
more you're going to have people
just not being able to do it.
You may all have the money to
re-open through a stimulus of
some sort, but if the customers
aren't willing to walk into the
restaurants, you know, and every
polling that I see says they're
not ready to come back.
I just got this paperwork, only
one in five restaurants around
the country have any confidence
that they can reopen their
businesses, one in five.
That's some dire numbers.
So here's something you can do.
Order take out or delivery
from locally owned restaurants,
and avoid services like
Grub Hub and Uber Eats,
because they charge the
restaurants huge fees.
Instead see if your local
restaurants will deliver.
That's a better option.
When we come back, the
ongoing crisis in the state's