Plea for restaurant rescue comes from mayors in Winston-Salem, across the Triad

Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines and mayors from around the Triad are joining forces to ask Washington to pass federal assistance to help restaurants make it through the winter.

Joines and the other mayors called on Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., to support a bill that would make available $120 billion in stimulus money to help restaurants, bars and food trucks survive the impact of COVID-19 has had on their businesses.

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., is already one of the bill's sponsors.

Algenon Cash, the director of the Triad Food & Beverage Coalition, organized the Tuesday news conference with the area mayors and kicked it off by saying that three-quarters of the state's 20,000 eating and drinking establishments were in danger of permanently closing "without immediate financial support."

Joines noted that while the city has tried to help restaurants with measures that include expanded outdoor dining, the approach of winter is shutting off even that option.

"It is a critical time for our small businesses here in the Triad and across the state, particularly in the next five months for our restaurants as they go through the cold winter months," Joines said. 

Calling the push "Make it to May," Joines said people can help by supporting local restaurants by dining-in or getting take-out food.

"Can you imagine waking up and finding that our city is without 75% of our unique restaurants?" Joines asked. "They add to the fabric and character of our city. We have to help them make it to May."

Joines said another effort is in the works that has the goal of getting 1,000 business leaders across the Triad to commit to spending $1,000 with local businesses as a way of increasing support for struggling small businesses in the region.

Many local restaurant owners say they fear that business won’t improve as long as the number of COVID-19 cases continues to rise.

“The PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) loan was what saved us earlier,” said Will Kingery, a co-owner of Willow’s Bistro and two King’s Crab Shack restaurants in Winston-Salem.

“People are getting scared, they’re not coming out, and there’s a real fear among restaurant workers who don’t know if they’re going to have a paycheck next week,” Kingery said.

Tony Maresca, the owner of Tre Nonne on Jonestown Road, said that his business is down 60 to 70 percent. “And that’s coming after 2019 – we suffered bad enough then because of the (Business 40) road closing,” he said. “If the governor pulls us back (to Phase One) again, I don’t know how many restaurants can survive without some kind of help.”

Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan said during Tuesday morning's news conference that when a small restaurant goes out of business it causes a ripple effect because a restaurant does business with suppliers of everything from linens to flowers.

"The mom and pops were shut down through no fault of their own, and we need to do what we can to make sure they stay whole," Vaughan said. "We know that our restaurant workers are being impacted in so many different ways through no fault of their own."

Buddy Milner, who co-owns Milner’s American Southern on Stratford Road with his brother John, said that PPP and other loans got the restaurant through the spring, and business had just started to improve at the end of the summer. But then it took a nosedive at the end of October. “It was like somebody cut the faucet off,” he said.

He said he felt fortunate that his 15-year-old restaurant has a solid customer base. “I think we’re going to weather the storm, but it’s going to hurt like hell and take years to make it all up.”

Simone Vicidomini, who has owned B.L.L. Rotisserie on Knollwood Street since 1993, said that restaurants that have been open only a year or two may be hurt the hardest during the coming winter.

"I just see things going down with cold weather coming," he said.

Lexington Mayor Newell Clark said that when the annual barbecue festival in his city was canceled for the first time in 35 years, it made a $9 million hole in the local economy.

"We need assistance, and we need our federal government to care about Main Street," Clark said.

The bill that restaurant owners want passed has made it through the U.S. House but is stalled in the Senate. Ian Baltutis, the mayor of Burlington, appealed during the news conference for people to "make their voices heard" in support of the legislation.

Timothy Bess, the owner of Prime Tyme Soul Cafe on University Parkway, said business is "so terrible I'm just barely hanging on."

Prime Tyme no longer has indoor dining, and while it offers take-out, that doesn't bring as many customers as sit-down dining, Bess said. He's had to lay off staff and count on understanding from the people he owes money to, he said.

"You've got these big places that can't make it, and I'm just hanging on by a thread," he said. "You can't continue paying when you don't have it coming in."

Business owners said that restaurants will be sorely missing all the catering and other events that normally make December one of their busiest months.

“November has been a bad month all around. December is going to be worse,” said Nick Karagiorgis, who owns five Little Richard’s barbecue restaurants in the area. He said he has been trying to keep everyone on the payroll but it’s becoming harder and harder. “The first time the PPP helped a lot. It took care of the payroll. Now we have payroll to pay but no we have no business. If they don’t get any aid out there, it’s going to be a disaster.”

Without aid, some restaurants may not make it. “Several times in the last month, I thought, ‘Today is my last day,” said Naznin Nasrin of Mystic Ginger, an Indian restaurant that opened downtown in 2018.

Three different loans propped up the restaurant through the summer, but she said she needs more.

Her pre-COVID staff of about 12 is now down to three, including herself. One of those is a man who comes in to clean on weekends.

“I don’t really need him because I can do the cleaning myself, but his wife is pregnant and he needs the help,” she said. “I don’t know what else to do.”