Is Dining Out?

The white tablecloths glow and the candles flicker, but the
maître d’ is liable to be clicking his heels by the front door, wondering where
the diners are.

At the pub around the corner or at the sandwich shop down
the road, perhaps.

Washington’s restaurant business has taken a beating this
year. The industry—the state’s largest employer—shed nearly 7,000 of its
201,000 employees in January; another 1,000 were laid off in February. Many
restaurants are struggling not only because of the economy, but also because of
wicked December weather. Across the state, snow forced businesses to cancel
company Christmas parties, leaving restaurants holding an especially pricy tab.

“The industry needs to get fat in December,” says Anthony
Anton, president and CEO of the Washington Restaurant Association (WRA).
“Ideally, restaurants are putting away nuts in December to survive for the next
three months. When Christmas parties are snowed out, they [restaurants] don’t
get rebooked for February.”

That downturn means many restaurants are experiencing a
deficit in cash, the very supply that most use to buoy themselves through the
slower winter months.

So which restaurants are on simmer and which are going cold?
Seattle institutions—where layoffs downtown affected the dining business—have
been hit hard, as have fine dining establishments and those catering to the
business lunch and expense account. Many iconic establishments, including Walla
Walla’s 26Brix, Seattle’s Typhoon! and Tacoma’s Sea Grill have shut their
doors.

And yet, hope glimmers somewhere on the horizon.
Neighborhood eateries, it turns out, are weathering the economic storm
reasonably well. At some Seattle restaurants, such as Endolyne Joe’s, the
Hi-Life and the 5 Spot, the morning breakfast run has been holding steady and
even seeing some growth, according to Jeremy Hardy, co-founder and managing
partner of Chow Foods, those eateries’ parent company. And while traffic during
the p.m. shift has been down, check orders have remained consistent, he
says. 

What’s more, despite the recession and a public bent on
maximizing its dining bargains and minimizing its tabs, new restaurants continue
to hang out their sandwich boards. Take, for example, Homegrown Sustainable
Sandwich Shop, which opened in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood March 24. Within
a month, the organic, quick service eatery was exceeding its profit
expectations.

That kind of success is due in part to the restaurant’s
business model: Quick service establishments—places where you order at the
counter and bus your own silverware—are faring well, garnering more of the
check. Experts say this situation is due in part to super-busy consumers
realizing they still want to eat out. So instead of foregoing restaurants
altogether, they have changed habits. When it’s healthy

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