-I think we all saw a lot of this coming.
I kind of what [indistinct]
keeping up with the news, like two different things, right.
You look at the numbers,
and you know you have to minimize your staff,
so you have to do layoffs.
I had a staff of 60 people.
Now I have a staff of less than 10.
For me, opening the restaurant was about providing jobs
and providing a work envrionment.
And for this to happen and for me to, like --
I almost feel like I went back on a promise
that I made to my staff.
-Literally 85% of our staffs are gone.
We had to lay them off.
Some of them have worked with us for even more than 10 years,
and a few of them even voluntarily asked to be laid off
so that they can give the position to others that need
to put bread on the table to support the families.
-I have three restaurants on pretty much the same block
in northern Seattle and Ravenna areas.
So, I mean, I couldn't do takeout
on all three restaurants,
so I had to consolidate the restaurants down
to try to figure out which restaurant could do takeout
and what restaurant can kind of serve
as commissary kitchen or a community kitchen.
And basically, we turned Salare into a community kitchen
where we're serving meals to those who are in need,
specifically those who are in the hospitality industry
that may be displaced or on unemployment right now.
We streamlined it where no one's
actually coming into the restaurant.
We set it up on our patio
where we have these complete packages
ready to go in a handheld bag,
and they're able to just grab a meal and go,
and some of it's re-heat,
some of it's ready to go and eat right then and there.
All of our employees are temperature checked
before they come in with a surface temperature reader.
They go through a quick questionnaire,
the manager on duty signs them in and signs them up
that they're good and cleared to work.
We have apparently less people in the kitchen, you know,
'cause there's just -- We couldn't bring everyone back,
so there's that social distancing
that we have actually in place for each station.
-Business definitely slowed down.
We also offered takeout, which we would not do normally.
It just doesn't make sense for our business model,
and we would probably lose more money
than actually make a profit.
It was just about two weeks of that,
and then we had to shut our doors.
-We have had at Sqirl a number of different things happening.
One is that we've had shirts by employees
that have been tie-dyed where all the funds have gone
into a bank for our hourly employees.
We have a coloring book that another employee has done
where all the proceeds go to hourly employees.
And we're about to start a number of different auctions
in order to donate to the hourly staff.
-So, we've changed our concept completely.
We used to do large family styles
and I guess I'd call it dim sum-style service.
But we switched to a Vietnamese takeout menu,
and our price point is anywhere from $6 to $16.
And we used to only be open for dinner,
but now we're open every day from 10:30 to 8:00.
We've hung up new signs to where our guests --
when they come to pick up,
that it's only in the front bar area.
So we have limited access.
We're spending twice as much on cleaning chemicals
even though we're only takeout now.
You know, it's all on keeping our employees safe,
keeping the guests safe.
-One thing we did add was a contact list delivery,
which is delivered from somebody in the store.
Right now, I believe where people are spending their money
is they have to trust you
or trust where they're getting their food from,
and those people will make deliveries to them.
And we just go to their house, knock on their door three times,
put it on their handle and walk away.
A big group of people out there that want to play
their delivery take out on the phone
because they want to hear somebody's voice,
and in the market I'm in, they're not using
Grubhub, they're not using their tablet or their iPhone.
They really want to talk to you on the phone.
And then when they're on the phone with you,
now you're their bartender or their psychotherapist
because they don't have those people anymore,
so you're hearing all these crazy stories,
which is really cool.
-We put our ready-to-go bags here,
which is six feet away
from where the customer's gonna pick it up,
and they pay over the phone with a credit card.
So basically, they just sign and grab their bags.
Other way, it's through the bar.
We have those doors open.
So they come through the door, and they just pick that up.
Well, to be honest, you know, we have learned
to use social media more.
We would, you know, innovate with a new post
and, you know, a new margarita --
new something -- and people are very supportive.
-Every Wednesday and Thursday, we do open mic night
and trivia night, and we're moving those online.
We've sort of pivoted things in the tap room
to to-go sales only, and we only have
a couple of people in here at any given time.
We're pre-filling our crowlers, which are 32-ounce cans
that we can fill off the taps and seal up.
Those are a lot safer than growlers,
especially at this time with all the virus going around.
We can sanitize them one by one, properly fill them,
and they last a lot longer.
We essentially lost 80% of our business overnight,
so we're mostly selling kegs to bars and restaurants,
essentially just now,
all of the sudden, operating like a small brew pub
when we're really set up as a medium-sized
brewing company that's doing larger distribution.
-When we received the okay to open our doors,
we will need tens of thousands to open both restaurants.
Our hope is to hire our entire staff back,
so that's around 90 employees
that we have for both restaurants.
-We're asking for help, but we need the public
to also help us with our voice.
If they have the income to eat out --
you know, eat out often, tip well,
go to a different restaurant every night.