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Double Whammy
HOW COVID AND INFLATION 86’ED LOCAL RESTAURANTS
By Lee Shearer news@flagpole.com
T hese are hard times in the restaurant
business.
In 2019, there were 19,000 restau
rants in Georgia, according to Karen
Bremer, president and CEO of the Georgia
Restaurant Association. About 60% of them
closed after the pandemic hit in February,
2020; about 4,000 closed for good, she said.
And for many, staying in business during
the pandemic years has come at a price.
“Some [owners] took a second mortgage.
Some sold their homes and moved into an
apartment,” Bremer said.
Here in Athens, restaurant closings
have become a staple of local news as well-
known and iconic restaurants wink out
even as COVID seems to be waning. The
world-famous vegetarian restaurant The
Grit served its last meals in October. Later
that month, the owners of Heirloom Cafe
and Fresh Market announced in social
media posts their last service would be Dec.
18. As November drew to a close, Japanese
sushi restaurant Ru-San’s owner announced
it would be closing to merge with another
restaurant in Oconee County.
Those were just some of the latest. Last
year, it was the Varsity saying goodbye. In
August, Winterville’s Wok Star, a praisewor
thy Chinese restaurant, shut down. “We’re
closed,” says a hand-lettered sign in a Wok
Star window. “No dine in. No pickup. No
delivery.”
There’s no such sign at The Grill down
town on College Square, just darkness.
Its doors have been shut for months after
a reopening that didn’t take. It’s closed
temporarily for maintenance and repair,
according to The Grill’s website. There’s a
“for lease” sign in what was Scoville’s Hot
Chicken at the corner of Jackson and Broad
Streets. Then there were Butcher and Vine
and Nedza’s in Five Points, and on and on.
A 2013 article in the UGA student news
paper The Red & Black listed the “top five
oldest restaurants in Athens” as The Grill,
The Varsity, Taco Stand (on Milledge), New
Orleans N’ Athens (formerly Harry Bissett’s
New Orleans Cafe) and downtown’s The
Mayflower, serving some of the best grits in
Athens since 1948. Today only two of those
are open—Taco Stand and the venerable
Mayflower.
Restaurants, of course, close for many
reasons or combinations of reasons which
may not have anything to do with the
pandemic—retirement, real estate transac
tions, changing tastes.
“We feel that it is time for us to focus
on spending quality time with our family,
who have been so supportive and under
standing over the last twelve years,” wrote
Heirloom’s owners, Travis Burch and
Jessica Rothacker, in social media posts. Ru
San’s is closing as a result of disagreement
between the restaurant and its landlord,
its owner explained on social media. The
Varsity closing was part of a big real estate
deal, with the Gordy family selling the prop
erty to Atlanta-based Fuqua Development.
One iconic restaurant’s demise was a
direct and immediate result of COVID, how
ever—downtown Broad Street’s Gyro Wrap,
shuttered in 2020 but now reincarnated
and reimagined under new management
in a spot just around the corner on College
Square. “It was just a perfect storm, all the
way around,” said former Gyro Wrap owner
David Carter, who’d run the place most of
the time since legendary Athens restaura
teur Bob Russo launched the restaurant in
1979. (The late Russo was also the founder
of The Grill.)
Athens-Clarke County’s sudden March
2020 COVID shutdown orders came just as
Carter was preparing to put the franchise
on the market. Carter was 66, and the time
for retirement had come. As COVID and
fear spread in the following weeks, the pos
sibility of selling the restaurant vanished.
UGA students went home and stayed there
through the summer, while other residents
hunkered down at home.
Carter had no way of knowing if there
would be in-person UGA classes in the fall
semester, the most important time of the
year for downtown restaurants and other
businesses. He couldn’t get any help from
the landlord, he said, and he could never get
a clear explanation when he tried to find
out how much financial liability he might
bear if he accepted federal payroll loans and
then was forced to shut down despite the
help.
“I didn’t want to take the risk,” said
Carter. Looking back, “I’m kind of glad I got
out of the business when I did,” he said. “It
would have been really hard to operate, to
do that safely.”
Now the Gyro Wrap has reopened
around the corner on College Square, with
a different model but pretty much the orig
inal dishes, and with Carter’s blessings—he
helped them get the original Gyro Wrap
recipes just right. “We’ve been slammed”
since opening earlier this fall, said operating
partner Joey Eells.
Eells and his partner started working
to reopen the restaurant soon after Carter
closed it. “We felt there was a void when the
Gyro Wrap closed,” Eells said.
They have worked to replicate the old
Gyro Wrap’s tastes, but the way it comes
to patrons is different. Instead of a server
taking orders on a paper pad, the ordering
and instructions to the food preparers are
digital now. Customers order at the counter,
or can order online through several delivery
platforms.
“We created a quick-service concept,”
Eells said. “People don’t have time any
more. They just want to get in and out.”
With more emphasis on takeout and
delivery, the restaurant needs less in-store
dining space. It also helps that College
Square restaurants now have outdoor din
ing space, thanks to the ACC Commission’s
decision last year to close the block between
Broad and Clayton Streets to vehicle traffic
and install picnic tables.
Next year, the new Gyro Wrap will
have something else the old one didn’t: an
upstairs room now being transformed into
an intimate wine and beer bar with a stage
for live music performance. The changes
reflect some trends in the restaurant indus
try the pandemic accelerated, according to
Bremer and restaurant industry publica
tions, like digitization, takeout and deliv
ery, online transactions and quick service.
“The restaurant industry had to embrace
technology very rapidly in order to survive,”
Bremer said. “Many didn’t have websites. It
was a massive effort for them.”
“The restaurants that you’d normally
think of as takeout, those places managed
to do quite well [during the pandemic],” said
David Lynn, planning and outreach director
for the Athens Downtown Development
Authority. But sit-down restaurants, if they
didn’t secure federal loans or didn’t figure
out some creative solution like the out
door seating area of The Last Resort Grill,
“they just closed,” he said. Some downtown
restaurants were also lucky enough to be
located on downtown streets where street
parking spaces or even part of the street
itself could be converted to outdoor dining.
People are venturing out more now
that the pandemic seems at last to be wan
ing, but the restaurant industry is beset
with new problems now. Labor costs are
up 11-12% over the past year, and some
wholesale food prices are up as much as
18%, Bremer said. “The key to everything is
the labor issue. People are paying excellent
wages right now but just can’t get people to
work at all,” she said.
“People should understand restaurants
are under a tremendous amount of eco
nomic pressure right now,” Bremer said. “If
you have a favorite restaurant, you need to
support that restaurant.” ©
Gyro Wrap closed during the pandemic, but reopened under new ownership with a new quick-service
model that’s become increasingly common.
6 FLAGPOLE.COM ■ DECEMBER 14, 2022
LEE SHEARER