Seattle restaurateur Tom Douglas is closing down two of his restaurants in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, home to Amazon and thousands of tech workers, as the prolonged effects of the coronavirus pandemic made reopening too difficult.
Located in the Terry Avenue Building in the heart of Amazonia, Brave Horse Tavern and Trattoria Cuoco will both close permanently as of July 15, according to Tom Douglas Seattle Kitchen.
“Many factors weighed into the determination, but in the end, it is the appropriate choice for our business,” Douglas said in a statement, in which he thanked Amazon as a landlord and its employees for being loyal customers.
The beer-heavy burger joint and the pasta spot were nearing the end of their 10-year leases and renewing was ruled out because of the uncertainty of the health crisis and what it will mean for workers returning to offices in the tech hub.
Like many downtown establishments, Brave Horse and Cuoco both relied on lunch and after-work crowds from Amazon and other companies with offices in the area, such as Google and Facebook. In April, Amazon announced that it was giving employees the option to do their jobs from home until at least early October.
“It’s a good spot when there’s humans down here. The lack of humans hurts,” Brave Horse Tavern manager Nicholas Robinson told GeekWire back in March before the initial closure.
Douglas temporarily closed 12 of his 13 restaurants in mid-March, citing a 90-percent decline in sales in the early weeks of the pandemic. The move impacted about 800 workers across such establishments as Dahlia Lounge, Palace Kitchen and Serious Pie. Douglas has continued to operate Serious TakeOut in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood.
During a virtual event in April, Douglas said his company was broke. And the move to Phase 2 of reopening won’t be a quick fix for many businesses.
“At the end of the day, there is a new reality in the … real estate market,” Douglas said in a Seattle Times story this week. “This could go on for years.”
Amazon previously offered $10 million in financial assistance to businesses around its Seattle offices impacted by employees working from home.
According to the Downtown Seattle Association, even as partial dine-in service resumes, the most recent full week available shows a 70% decrease in restaurant revenue from comparable days in 2019.
Don Blakeney, the association’s vice president of Advocacy & Economic Development, told GeekWire that restaurant owners are in a really challenging spot and that concern for the safety of employees and customers has them rethinking every aspect of their business model, from safety, to supply chains, to HR and healthcare.
“As they redesign their business models, they also struggle to predict the changing landscape of customer demand and health and safety regulations — which are also shaping when employees/customers return to downtown,” Blakeney said via email.
He added that the changing eligibility for unemployment in relation to opening phases has not been clear, and how to plan for or respond to an outbreak in the workplace is uncharted territory.
