The New York Hospitality Coalition is building a community amid Corunavirus

These are dark times for the restaurant industry everywhere, but even in the midst of all the bad news, there are stories of solidarity and hope, of people coming together to support one another.

Chef Greg Baxtrom and restaurateur Max Katzenberg, owners of Brooklyn restaurants Olmsted and Maison Yaki are pointing the way out of this crisis by working to create a community of hospitality workers.

“We’re working on two fronts,” says Katzenberg on the phone from New York. “We’ve started a coalition of New York’s small business operators and the other we’ve partnered with Maker’s Mark and the Ed Lee Initiative, we’re going to flip Olmsted into a food bank for anyone in the industry.”

“Starting today you can come for a meal, you can pick up ingredients to cook for yourself during the week and whatever toiletries we can round-up.”

It’s one example of how hospitality workers are coming together at a local level to roll their sleeves up and help those in need, even though they may have been adversely affected by the crisis themselves.

“We’re unemployed also,” says Max. “This crisis affects all of us. It’s important to remember that we’re all in this together.”

It is said that you should never waste a crisis, and while this one represents immediate difficulties for millions of workers, Greg Baxtrom sees an opportunity to galvanize the restaurant industry.

“We’re trying to create a community,” he says. “Create a resource for our operators and our workers to get back on their feet when this is all over.”

“We’re hoping to take the opportunity and build a community. We want a free exchange of ideas, we want to bring experts in the form of attorneys, human resources, Congressmen and very experienced operators, and distil that expertise so the mom and pop restaurants will have a fighting chance of reopening when the crisis ends.

New York Hospitality Coalition is pooling resources and working at a local level to make sure people have what they need to re-emerge from this crisis once it ends.

“There are fights on all levels here,” says Max. “The big-name chefs like Tom Colicchio, the celebrity TV guys, they have more access at the federal level, from what we’ve heard they’ve been able to hire lobbyists and make a go of it. At a state level, we’ve formed this coalition, we may have one set of skills, but someone else will have another, maybe someone will be the next-door neighbour of someone in congress. We just want to pool everyone’s resources and then distribute.”

“We’re going to make it through this."

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The US government has rolled out a stimulus package and the Coalition are going theorugh it and seeing what that means for business on the ground in their neighbouthood.

“Businesses need cash relief and they need it in the form of loans forgiveness, grants and zero-interest loans,” says Greg. “Our workforce has been put on sub-minimum wage employment benefits, the stimulus package goes some way to addressing these questions but there is a lot more to do.

“Now the administration does its thing, but we have to make sure that our people can actually get the money. Many of them are operators, many are business owners, but their first and foremost hospitality workers, they don’t have an MBA or Masters in business, and if you want to fill a loan application, it’s a very difficult process to go through. We need more relief from sales tax, from payroll tax, it’s almost an endless list.

Of course there is real concern for the welfare of hospitality workers who all of a sudden are unemployed as a result of restaurant closures across the country, but the reality is that, their unemployment affects many mor industries associated with them, explains Max.

“Everyone understands there are a lot of restaurants workers but they see it as something people do when they’re students or kids, but for us, this is our careers. We recently had to lay-off 60 people, we’re relatively small, but on one street, that’s 60 people unemployed overnight. That’s 60 people not getting their dry-cleaning done across the street, not getting their coffee at the bakery, not getting their organic juice before they start their shift, not going to the bar across the street after their shift, they’re not going to the local pet food store, all those other places have been hit.”

These are all big question and the actions that will answer them will ultimately take place at the federal level. However, for Greg and Max, they can work in the here and now, at a local level, firstly feeding the community that they are galvanising.

“The Lee Initiative realised that in New York, liquor companies aren’t using their marketing budget, right now,” says Max So we were able to get Maker’s Mark to sponsor our foodbank project. The crazy thing is though, even though we can offer employment to our staff at this moment, many of them don’t want to leave their homes, they’re terrified. We’re just doing our best to try and help this. We’re all in this together,” he says.

Galvanizing the Industry: Olmsted Opens as Community Food Bank

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