Ben Maides - Au Courant
MARCH 19, 2020 © Right Here, Right Now.
“I’m grateful that at the end of the day, I’m healthy and I have my family. You know I think that’s the main thing. No one’s hurt yet, immediately here. Everyone’s healthy and honestly, at the end of the day, that’s kind of the main thing.
Things are going to get really interesting. We just ran our last payroll a week early so we could take care of our staff. We had to lay off all of the staff. I mean, Long story short, the United States is gonna be a restaurant dessert if the government doesn’t help us. You know we’re always the ones to kind of help out, do charity events, do this, do that. And I think the government as a whole is kind of in denial about the whole restaurant industry. I mean look at the facts, look at the numbers. We pay more taxes, we employ more people, the United States is gonna make some decisions that are gonna change the restaurant industry, hopefully for the better but I’m not optimistic. I’m trying to be but it’s hard.
We kind of had a meeting with everybody on Monday. We sat down with all our management and some of our staff. And we were like “What do we do here?” we can’t really open to the public, it doesn’t really make sense for us. Who knows if we even have ten people show up? Do we do to-go’s? And you know, we’re going to shut down for two weeks and now two have turned into six. I mean everybody kind of decided, we wanted to get everybody on unemployment so they could have something. We’re a restaurant business you know? It's 5% if you’re lucky and we run low margins here especially for this concept because we’re trying to keep our price points down and it's tough because there’s not a lot of overhead and it just breaks my heart because I want to take better care of our staff, our family here and I can’t.
It didn’t really hit me until afterward when I was driving to the store and I just really felt depressed and I felt like shit and I’m like “literally my whole staff does not have a job anymore “ and I’m like “This sucks”. Everything everyone’s worked so hard for in the beginning, and I’ve told everybody since day one that this restaurant isn’t about me, it’s about everybody that makes this restaurant what it is and what success we have had I always contribute it to my staff. A lot of people have been here since day one, Chovy, Lee…you know, we’ve all worked really hard to kind of make this place what it is and you know, those people, you know we can’t pay them and who knows what’s going to happen? It is what it is, literally one day at a time, everything’s changing so…
Just hang tough, let’s prepare for the worst and hope for the best. The community, the local community has really been on the same page about this. Everybody is helping each other out as much as they can and it’s truly going to be interesting, but at the end of the day, there’s only so much we can do you know?
It’s been three and a half years of 14 hour days at least, sometimes more and sometimes less of really constantly pushing and it wasn’t until about a month ago where I had been kind of trying to take a little step back because we have another kid on the way, there’s no health insurance. This is hard stuff and when you know, your business…you have to make a decision, is this business going to provide for me or is it gonna provide for my staff? I’ve always put my staff first and have tried to support them first but you know, we did get some recognition from James Beard which we’re super humbled by and grateful for, and you know, that brought some people in, but here we are weeks later and we’re closed.
I don’t think the general public understands how hard the restaurant industry works to provide people hospitality and you know as a whole, maybe when it’s gone they’ll appreciate it more. Maybe people start cooking at home and they realize how much work it is and the next time they go out and have that bolognese that’s been simmering for 12 hours and the pasta that’s been hand-rolled they might appreciate it a little bit more. But I don’t know, I mean we’re not in New York, we’re not in San Francisco, people live to dine and you know in Omaha we’ve had a lot of luck. We’ve had a lot of people that have supported us greatly but we’re a restaurant, we’re not a bank. You know, It is what it is, but we do it for the love, we do it to nourish people.
I’m so optimistic, I want more people to eat good food. I don’t care what it is, I just want people to nourish themselves more wholesome, more healthy, more unique. I just want people to just kind of stop, slow down, just be like “Hey we need to enjoy each other” and the best way to do that is the dinner table. Whether it’s in my restaurant, your house, or somewhere else. We need to stop and realize that we need to slow down, we need to nourish ourselves, and enjoy each others company. And at the end of the day if something like this doesn’t make people realize that, then I don’t know what will. We need to nourish each other with food, with conversation, with everything, and that’s the whole beauty of it.
Everyones been pretty cool, I’ve talked to Dave Utterback, I’ve talked to Ellie Pegler, I’ve talked to Paul Urban a lot, I talk to him a lot just in general to get advice. Everyone’s kind of reached out to each other and I’ve been in touch with a lot of people and everyone's kind of on the same page. Noah Mock’s been awesome at organizing some stuff, kind of getting a Facebook group going of what's going to happen, where, why, and how.
I hope that the government makes the decision to kind of prioritize hospitality, we don’t have a lobbyist. We don’t have people that can speak for us and I feel like the hospitality industry in the United States gets drowned out as a whole and I just hope that people wake up and you know, if you want a place to eat after all of this, then talk to the government because they’re the ones that are going to control the fate of restaurants as we know it.
You know I think creatives in general always kind of get the shaft because we’re doing what we believe in and trying to create and that’s tough because that doesn’t always pay the bills. I’m sure there’s a lot of people that have it a lot worse than we do and my heart goes out to them but hopefully, things get better for everybody, not just for the restaurant industry.”