After six months of dependence on Takeout and Delivery and a Spring and Summer season of outdoor dining, New York City’s restaurants have something to celebrate. They have begun doing what they do best and what is near and dear to their hearts: welcoming back customers in their dining rooms.
In order to accomplish that goal after a long wait that many felt was just the result of bad timing, New York City’s restaurants moved quickly to ensure a safe opening of those dining rooms. The delays came from spikes in COVID-19 cases in other cities around the country. Many felt that it forced the hand of Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio to delay what was supposed to be an early July return to indoor dining. With the go-ahead to reopen dining rooms, it was clear that a new protocol relative to air quality and disinfecting was going to be mandatory moving forward. In addition, this new layer of safety needed to be coordinated with many of the changes that restaurant operators made to accommodate outdoor dining and takeout & delivery.
“We moved away from our all a carte operation to a prix fixed menu to streamline, how we operate noted,” Jeff Katz of the Financial District’s Crown Shy restaurant. “Our next step as we looked at coming back inside was to make a commitment to the air circulating in the restaurant,” Katz continued. “We wanted to make a statement to our customers and our team, so we did our research and found Atmos Air. As we did our homework, we learned that the use of MERV-11 filters would enable us to ensure the air quality in both the kitchen and dining area.”
More efficient and higher rated MERV filters have emerged as the industry standard for coronavirus prevention. They are installed in a restaurant’s HVAC system to capture airborne viruses and bacteria from coughs and sneezes. The goal is to provide clean air quality that maximizes the strength of the immune system.
“Needless to say, our very first step has been to embrace the masks, gloves, and spacing, Katz continued. What used to be a family meal for our team has evolved into spacing so that you are eating by yourself with six feet of spacing. We take everybody’s temperature on the way in and ask all of the COVID-19 related questions.
Katz, as with many members of New York City restaurant community, are struggling with the economics of a 25% cap on restaurant capacity. “It’s a challenge on the weekends unless you want to come in early or late which is now 9pm. It’s with this issue that the challenges that restauranteur are dealing with comes to the forefront. We need to be able to close so that our team who are dependent on the MTA to get to and from work can catch the last subway at 9:30 pm. So keep in mind that Pre-COVID, we are used to serving until 11 pm.”
“If I could have one wish right now, it would be to let me reopen my bar. We are still giving people a great dining experience but the bar is the center of the energy of our restaurant. We have high ceilings and we made the commitment to the very best air quality filtration solution, so it really does feel safe. People want to sit at the bar and I don’t care if I have to put a huge acrylic screen in. Keep in mind that 98% of the people that sit at my bar also eat there.”
Katz continues to be concerned with return of consumer confidence.
“To be honest, the traditional food media that consumers look to has not been particularly supportive. They seem to be constantly asking why are you opening and putting your team in harms’ way? Please understand, nobody is forcing anybody to come back to work. We had 135 employees when we closed in March and today we have 35. At the end of the day, if we don’t open then how are these people going to make money? Frankly, it’s not like the government has stepped in and is supporting anybody. These guys can’t live in Manhattan on $500 a week. If you don’t want me to reopen then pass the Restaurant Act.”
Once again there seems to be no recognition for the work that was done by Crown Shy and the restaurant community on behalf of the City’ First responders. “After laying off 275 people and closing the restaurant in March, we took a team of six and put them into quarantine so that we could cook for the ReThink program,” Katz continued. “We need someone to come out and say: maybe these guys need a hand.”
Day & Nite was at the forefront of working with Crown Shy and many of the City’s leading restaurant and hospitality operators in advance of the mandated shutdown. “We were actually writing to our client base as early as January 2020 as CV-19 mounted in China making its way toward Europe we continued to warn internally as well as our client base to ready,” noted Day & Nite President Matt Sher. “We could see that a solution was going to require more than the varied technologies we used over the years for Sick Building Syndrome and looked at for LEED Certified spaces.”
The challenge of preparing for reopening came from the industry-wide search for a silver bullet of guidance from the government. As often happens, lacking a target date, lacking a unified voice of reason, more than likely billions of dollars were wasted on passive and antiquated remedies. There were a number of operators including Crown Shy and Raoul’s knew that using chemicals to clean simply wouldn’t suffice. Day & Nite’s prep work once again put them in a position to help their customer base implement an innovative solution for a new challenge.
“We held true to what we knew by way of independent laboratory testing,” Sher said. “We continued to press through our HVAC division our Performance Solutions to ACTIVELY combat viral pathogen in the air and on surfaces with a variety of proven technologies.”
The irony of the Crown Shy solution is that it features a Connecticut based company technology located just 40 miles from Manhattan. Atmos Air Bi-Polar Ionization has been proven through testing as the most effective way to actively combat Viral Pathogen, Bacteria, Mold, VOC’s and in particular CoronaVirus.
There are less powerful systems but when it comes to UL 2998 standards and the active Kill Rate of Atmos Air BPI, there is nothing as effective on the market to impact IEQ. “Day & Nite has always been brand/solution agnostic and so it comes down to what is best for our clients. We have a variety of other Air Side Performance Solutions if it becomes a matter of budget,” Sher concluded.
