Closing our restaurant was one of the most heartbreaking experiences of my life. After five years of serving customers the best roasted chickens in San Francisco, we shut our doors for good. We had lost our lease, which meant essentially we had nothing to sell, except our equipment, and all the money we had poured into building the space was lost. We had nothing left.
For years after closing Mistral Rotisserie in the Ferry Building Marketplace, I couldn’t bear to walk into the building. It was just too painful. I recognize now that was a form of PTSD. The last year had been emotionally brutal and I had forced myself to move through it as quickly as possible for the good of my family. The pain lingered.
It didn’t help that random people on the bus would recognize me from those days behind the counter and ask me, “When are you going to reopen?” “What are you and your husband doing now?”
One day, two years later, I received a call from a woman in Upstate New York. She was the sister of one of our dearest regulars, calling to tell me her brother had passed away, alone in his room in the Tenderloin. “But you brought Davey such joy and kept him well fed for all those years, thank you,” she said.
It wasn’t right. It was only at that moment that I truly felt the impact of what that closure meant. It wasn’t about me, or my family. It was much more significant than that. I had failed to see the breadth of my responsibility when we opened our business. I had failed to understand the consequences of the existence of our business to everyone and everything around it. I was determined to ensure other restaurants didn’t make the same mistake.
When restaurants open, it is a creation. A space is created for community. They occupy a space on the street or in a building. The space is no longer empty. Where nothing was generated before, something exists. We may not notice this until it becomes empty again. Let’s talk about what happens in between.
You become an employer. You have created jobs for people. Those people rely on you for livihood. They will be spending large swaths of time in service of customers, with each other, and with you. If that time is spent in harsh conditions, they are likely to find other work that suits them better. And if you don’t run your business well and can’t pay them, that’s on you.
You have customers. Customers trust that you will give them something of value, something worth coming to you for. Well-prepared food. Maybe a new experience. Maybe nostalgia. You’ve made a pact with them when they walk in your door to provide something they want or need. It must be worth something to them or they will no longer walk in your door. And when you close your doors forever, they will no longer have access to that.
You have vendors. Vendors are happy you are there because you provide business for them. They are partners in your success. They can find whatever it is you need and deliver it to you. But if you don’t pay them in a timely manner, they can no longer trust the relationship and can no longer be your partner.
And perhaps you have investors. A financial relationship — perhaps a bank that loaned you the money to start your business. They are also invested in your success. Don’t push them away. They may have ideas or resources you aren’t taking advantage of, and they want to help. And when you close, they may have lost money, but they’ve also lost trust.
What does it mean to take care of each of these communities? It begins acknowledging what you don’t know, and finding ways to fill in that knowledge gap. Understand your financial situation because that will address the needs of two of these communities. Create a culture for your workers that has them excited and engaged and safe. And nurture your customer base by giving them something of value worth coming back for.
Helping restaurant entrepreneurs be accountable to these four communities is the core of what I do. It was from the anguish of closing my own restaurant that I came to learn this and heal.
