You can still hear anger and sadness in Tony May’s voice when he talks about the terrorist attacks that destroyed New York’s World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
“It’s not a matter of overcoming it,” he says. “It’s just like when you lose a dear one. You never forget them; you just get accustomed to not having them around.”
May, owner-operator of San Domenico, a venerable fine-dining establishment in midtown Manhattan, lost two restaurants in the attack, the upscale Gemelli and quick-service Pasta Break, situated on the ground-floor and concourse levels of the WTC, respectively. Although May, using 9/11 insurance money, tried to reopen Pasta Break at a different location a year after the attack, the attempt failed and his business never fully recovered. Still, he says, in order to stay in the game, it’s important to keep moving forward and not dwell on the past or situations you can’t control.
“I never look behind,” he says. “I always look ahead. That’s why I’m still smiling.”
May is one of many restaurant operators who have been dealt some unlucky cards—the residual effects of an act of war or terrorism—but have managed to turn that adversity into a winning hand.
“There’s really nothing you can do to prevent a disaster from happening,” he says. “The operator has to stay cool and do the best he can to protect his business to the best of his ability. It is in a time of crisis when you must show true leadership.”
Perhaps it was the confusion surrounding the 9/11 attacks that led some New York restaurateurs, particularly those with businesses in Lower Manhattan, to take matters into their own hands. Drew Nieporent, co-owner of the New York-based Myriad Restaurant Group, operator of such upscale restaurants as Tribeca Grill, Montrachet, Nobu, Nobu Next Door, Layla and TriBakery, is a case in point. Following the attacks, Nieporent estimates that he lost nearly $1 million in potential sales while paying out approximately $300,000 in salaries to his employees.
So he mobilized his own staff and helped lead his peers to reclaim their neighborhood, first by getting involved in the feeding of rescue workers and then by reopening his restaurants downtown.
“There was so much uncertainty surrounding the event, and unlike so many other businesses, we were closed—not just one restaurant, but six,” he says. “The first thing we tried to do was assess the possibility of reopening. Once it became apparent to everyone down here that that was the right approach, we did everything in our power to [reopen]. Initially, after we were open again for a short while, the most important thing was to make a decision whether to pay staff or not for the time we were closed, and we did. We never stopped.”
WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS… Have a business continuity plan in place, including off-site storage of payroll and employee records as well as the contact numbers for your customer base so you can contact them upon reopening. Put Mylar or shatter-resistant material around big windows so shards of glass will not fly through the restaurant if it is targeted. Provide on-site security if you have a high-profile clientele.
Nieporent, who even used two of his own vehicles as shuttles for customers from Canal Street and further down, was determined to do everything in his power to stay open while, at the same time, giving back to the community.
“You have to have confidence that you’re going to be able to go forward,” he says. “It is important to run your operations as normally as possible, and whenever there is a problem, that’s when you call on the reserve of the intangible, which is goodwill. You can’t put a price on it, but you tend to feel it. People respond. The good news was that there was a tremendous feeling of community for a good two or two and a half years afterward. The unfortunate turn of events is that we went to war in Iraq, and that spirit seems to have gone away.”
According to data collected by the New York City Partnership and the Chamber of Commerce, the travel and tourism industry lost approximately $13 billion in revenues and more than 20,000 people lost their jobs after the 9/11 attacks. The restaurant industry suffered revenue declines of between 20 percent and 30 percent, and a total of 30 restaurants shuttered permanently, including 14 that were located inside the World Trade Center. In addition, 37 restaurants closed temporarily.
Though some say business is just about back to pre-9/11 levels, Nieporent is not convinced of that notion, particularly when it concerns businesses located near ground zero.
“Depending on what part of town you’re in, I’m not so sure it really is back to where it was,” he says. “Many restaurants have closed, and in the final analysis some people weathered the storm, but not everyone did.”
The events of 9/11 are not the only attacks to rattle U.S. citizens. Others, like the bombings in Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Olympics and the explosion at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in April 1995, also leveled psyches and dealt a blow to restaurateurs in the vicinity.
“When the [Oklahoma City] bombing actually took place, we were in the middle of our state restaurant show,” recalls Dick Stubbs, proprietor of the upscale-casual Cattlemen’s Steakhouse. “We literally shut down and became a giant kitchen for those who responded to the tragedy—rescue workers, FEMA. For 24 hours a day, restaurant people and suppliers in the area pulled together to feed thousands of meals around the clock.”
In addition to helping feed the rescue workers, Stubbs also had to deal with declining sales at another restaurant he owned at the time, a banquet facility called Applewoods that catered to many of the businesses and government agencies that were housed in the Murrah building. Meanwhile, Cattleman’s continued to thrive, he says.
“The restaurants I owned were affected in two different ways,” he says. “Business at the banquet center slowed down for about six months afterward. Groups canceled their events because people were just not in a festive mood and didn’t want to go out to dinner much.”
At the same time, he adds, “business at Cattlemen’s, which was located about two miles away [from the bombed site], got some extra business because the area wasn’t cordoned off. The teams of rescuers, when they had time off, would come in to try to relax. Also, we were serving breakfast, so consequently we were open more than a lot of other places.”
Prior to the bombing, Applewoods, which Stubbs sold in 2002, had posted annual sales of approximately $4 million. The dropoff in sales forced Stubbs to come up with inventive ways to stay in business.
“Unfortunately, a lot of our regular customers were inside the Murrah building and died,” he says. “We lost a lot of business, so we had to find other ways to keep our workers employed. A lot of our banquet people were not regular employees, so we tried to get them into our other restaurant or with friends at other establishments who hired them in order to keep their salaries coming in.”
Stubbs notes that it was important to cut costs and watch the bottom line during that rough period. He says tighter management controls helped keep him operating.
“When you’re running at a certain level, you tend not to be as detail-oriented with your costs,” he says. “The first thing you have to do is start analyzing everything you buy and make sure you get the best price for it. Also, cutting back on utilities and man hours helped. This situation almost forced us to be better managers of the cost end of our business.
He adds, “One other thing we noticed during the first three or four months [following the attack] was that advertising didn’t seem to work, so we scaled back on it until we felt people were ready to come back out.”
Sales are not the only thing at risk by acts of terror. Restaurants themselves, especially those with high-profile clienteles, are sometimes targets, says Donald R. Hamilton, executive director of the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, based in Oklahoma City.
“I know from direct, personal experience that terrorists around the world frequently attack restaurants,” he says, “whether it is a fast-food outlet like Sbarro in the Middle East, which was hit by a suicide bomber, or a fine-dining restaurant in Peru, which was once the subject of a car bombing.”
“Restaurants attract crowds and, therefore, terrorists are attracted,” he continues. “The fact remains restaurants are popular for attack because a lot of people tend to gather there and, by their very nature, they’re easy targets since there are no glass shields around them [for protection]. They’re easier to blow up than an embassy or military headquarters.”
Hamilton says that terrorists are particularly attracted to American restaurant brands as targets because of the symbolism evoked by damaging them.
“Restaurants are iconic in the way that McDonald’s or Burger King tends to stand for the United States or the West,” he says. “They are attacked because they are deemed to be American.”
That said, restaurants are more likely to be affected by floods, fire or tornadoes, Hamilton says. Still, the key to surviving acts of terrorism or war is preparation and asking a series of what-if questions, he says.
“What if you are closed for two weeks?” he asks. “You have to have off-site records. They’re critical for keeping your payroll up to date or staying in touch with employees, whether you’re closed because of terrorism or a natural disaster. You’ve got to be able to call your people, see who’s OK and who’s not. Suppose there’s an attack. Do you have next of kin contact information for your workers? I know there’s a lot of turnover in this business, but it’s not hard to keep up to date. If you don’t, it can get away from you with disastrous results.”
Chuck Hunt, executive vice president of the New York City chapter of the New York State Restaurant Association, agrees that having a plan in place is crucial to surviving disaster.
“Each restaurateur racks his or her brain to come up with ways to deal with disaster,” he says. “The most important thing is to have a disaster plan in place. Because things happen, operators must make sure they know what to do in the unlikely event it happens to them. So do what the Boy Scouts do: Be prepared. You must be aware and be conscious.”