NOW WHAT? - Critical Thoughts and Practical Strategies on Restoring Our Restaurants

GRUPPO ITALIANO has brought together a panel of strategic thinkers to address the critical pieces of the reopening puzzle: real estate, retail and restaurateurs, and legal counsel (on federal, state and city financial support).

The impact of COVID-19 outbreak has been devastating to the entire food industry chain, from real estate (landlords), to restaurants, employees, importers, and distributors. The industry has been scrambling since day one of their mandated closure to cope with lost revenue, jobs, rents, ever-pressing bills, sanitation requirements expected, and what a reopening may look like (when it happens)—-and more importantly—-how to make up all the lost ground.

Panelists will discuss hands-on, practical action that can be taken to help restauranteurs and related businesses form answers and approaches to the myriad of challenges they immediately face.

FEATURED SPEAKER

Steve Cuozzo, New York Post Columnist

PANELISTS

Steven Soutendijk Executive Managing Director, Cushman & Wakefield, Inc.

William F. Dahill, Partner, Dunnington Bartholow, Miller, LLP, Federal, State and City Financial Support

Gianfranco Sorrentino, Managing Partner of Il Gattapardo Group

MODERATOR

Mitchell Davis, Chief Strategist, The James Beard Foundation

Some of the highlights of the webinar were as follows:

Steve Cuozzo of New York Post talks about the future of restaurants in NYC:

"It's possible that restaurants will start to reopen a few months from now. The lockdown has exacted a terrible toll on owners and 370,000 former employees in the city alone who lost their livelihoods at a stroke. And of course, on the many millions of us, for whom dining out is a major part of our lives. No one knows yet how many places will be open and On what basis. Daniel Humm has said that the future is questionable even for 11 Madison Park.

Restaurateurs can't pay their rent without revenue. But landlords are in a similar bind to pay their mortgages. Without government mandated relief, the whole structure might collapse. Some New York landlords have even threatened the hold restaurant owning tenants personally liable for the full terms of their lease."

Mitchell Davis of James Beard on the restaurant industry:

"I think it has been really eye opening for most of the public and even our legislators, if not anyone working in the restaurants, is how precarious the restaurant business model is, and has always been. This is not a high margin, let's cash it in, even though they're best eating in restaurants is not cheap, and limited for too many who would sort of find themselves in an affluent sector. They are not cash cows, as one might imagine. And this has really revealed the problems, the lack of cash flow, the way that distributors are supporting, through cash flow. So tonight's dinner is paying for yesterday's ingredients."

Steven Soutendijk of Cushman & Wakefield on restaurants and landlord during COVID:

"I've had over the last eight weeks, dozens and dozens of conversations with both restaurateurs and landlords. Whether they were large institutional real estate investment trusts or Co Op boards or more local mom and pop landlords, and I've developed some clarity on most of those conversations, I would say that 95 out of 100 landlord tenant relationships between restaurant tours and landlords provided that there has been open communication, and that is a very important thing to note have been very friendly and very amicable."

William Dahill of Dunnington Bartholow, Miller, LLP on Paycheck Protection Program:

"The PPP, the paycheck Protection Program, which has been the subject of such tremendous coverage for a number of reasons, including the kind of abuses of it if you will That Steve mentioned earlier, in essence is a program which for restaurants which have up to, I'm going to focus on restaurants, it's obviously here beyond that, and frankly geared for other industries better than for restaurants. For locations for up to 500 employees, a restaurant tour was eligible to obtain a loan. That's intended to be forgivable. That's calculated by 2.5 times your average payroll from a set period during the prior 12 months, which includes not only regular compensation, but also includes tips. Also, it is maxed out when you're doing that calculation at $100,000 per person when you're computing what that average was."

Gianfranco Sorrentino of Il Gattapardo Group on the restaurant industry and landlords:

"I would like to propose to they work to help us for the next two years on a percentage rate rent. If we want to survive for the next two years, we need a kind of deal, if I make zero money, I pay zero money, if I make a million dollars, I pay a percentage of that."

You can watch the entire webinar video here.