Celebrating Our Birthday in COVID
Jen & Chris before opening April 16, 2020.
Well, we made it! Our first year. I don’t know what the statistics are but I’m pretty sure at the best of times the survival rate for new restaurants is grim. Then you add a global pandemic.
There’s no question this isn’t the first birthday we envisioned.
As I write this, Grey Bruce is in the midst of a surge in COVID-19 cases that is at a “critical threshold”. On Wednesday evening, all residents were advised to assume they have COVID for the next 48 hours. Businesses have voluntarily closed their doors. We opted to do the same for today.
So, instead of celebrating with our friends, family and customers, we are quietly reflecting today on the past year. We will touch up a few more things in the restaurant and await today’s news from Public Health to decide if we should indeed re-open tomorrow.
This is the roller coaster that is COVID-19. For a year now, we’ve operated with a “one week at a time” mindset. I felt like it provided me with the ability to focus on what we could control and for the most part, felt my resilience kick in.
I think of resiliency now like an elastic. You stretch an elastic and it doesn’t break. But if you keep stretching it and never let is relax, eventually it will break. Eventually, even the most resilient among us will break if they are never able to let their guard down and relax. I feel like we’re all reaching that point in this latest lockdown. And yet this is possibly the most critical lockdown yet.
One year ago, when we opened our doors we never imagined that today we would be closed. That COVID-19 would even still be a thing.
We were overwhelmed with community support. We made 230 pizzas the first weekend we were open! In fact, on our first night open we used up all the dough Chris has made for the entire weekend. We were in the kitchen until nearly 11 PM making more dough for the next day.
I quickly learned how critical communication is and that limiting orders was not only good to keep customers distanced, but it was also going to save our relationship. We landed on spacing orders out by every 10 minutes.
Generally, that was enough time for Chris to make an order and keep his line stocked. It varies depending on how big the order is and then, when we have customers dining in we had to relearn how take-out fit but we found a groove eventually.
It is a surprise to some customers who call to order for an immediate pick-up or try to order on Fridays (still our most busy night) at 5:30 PM (our most busy time). Making good food from scratch takes time though. Logically, we understand this but unconsciously, I think we’ve all be trained to expect things instantly in this society. I’ve now reset my expectations of not only restaurants, but all small businesses. When I order, if it’s something I want and it’s being made from scratch, it’s better worth a wait.
Luckily, our customers understood and word grew. For the first several weeks, if you wanted to pickup an order on Friday, you had to order by Thursday morning we were so busy.
Chris pulling the first pizza out of our first stone oven, that we purchased used.
Those first pizzas tasted good, even if looking at them today, they looked a little funny. After some time, experimenting with the dough fermentation, moisture levels and adjusting for air temperature variation, Chris landed on the perfect recipe.
We changed our menu weekly at first. Trying different pizza and sandwich combinations until we finally landed on a menu that would take us through summer patio season.
Early days of the patio.
In June or July, we were allowed to open our patio. We had hired two students, Madison and Brandon, who were helping Chris in the kitchen and me in the front. We didn’t have dishes or glassware though and because dining in was not allowed when we initially opened, we were still only inspected as a “takeout restaurant” by Public Health. So, we served our food in takeout containers and customers ordered at the bar.
We were able to get Public Health back to do their inspection and by August, we were finally starting to feel like Bonfire on Queen was operating more the way we had always imagined. Our patio was busy and while we were eventually allowed to open inside, most people were still hesitant.
Mother Nature blessed us with wonderful weather all summer and into fall. I think we only closed our patio twice due to weather. As restrictions loosened, there were even a few times where not even the rain could stop our customers from enjoying a meal and the company of friends.
In September, we hired Tanice, our first server, and finally felt like we were more of a restaurant than a “pizza place”. While COVID allowed a lot of people to try our food by ordering takekout, our dream was still very much that Bonfire on Queen would be the Social House it’s so named.
Paisley’s own Bob Robb was the first musican we invited to play at Bonfire and over a couple weekends, we tested out our little stage with live music. All the while, riding the roller coaster of changing restrictions and situation reports and increased requirements of our business, including masks and contact tracing.
It seems crazy to think now that there was a time last year when we were unsure if we should wear masks, doesn’t it?
Fall led into winter and we began to learn a little about what seasonality looks like. At the same time, the used stone oven we had purchased was starting to really give us grief. After multiple attempts to fix it and stop the issues, we found out it was simply too old. We started researching new ovens and planning to replace it in the new year.
Bob Robb playing on our patio.
The first weekend of December during our village’s Christmas “shoppers weekend”, with a full restaurant, Bob Robb playing and a line up to get inside, our oven quit. Orders were lined up and reservations still coming in for the evening and we had no pizza oven. I will never forget Chris’ calm focus in that moment as he stopped and figured out what we could do. Soon, he was making the existing orders in the former owner’s electric oven.
Before dinner, he reconfigured the kitchen and we were back in business. Rita’s pizza oven saved the day and in fact, it was our pizza oven until we installed the new one in early February.
That basically brings me to 2021 and where we are today. As of today, indoor dining has been shut down for ten of the past fourteen weeks. Orders have been steady and we’re glad Alicia and Tanice have hung in with us for the takeout weeks. We’d like to be open as much as anyone else, but also know how hard this pandemic has been on so many other people, especially our health care workers and caregivers.
There will be a day we can have a big celebration, but that day is not today. We hope it’s a party with friends and family and customers inside the restaurant and on our patio under the twinkling lights and the leaves rustling in the breeze. We will celebrate not only the end of isolation and restrictions but our community that has rallied for us and all businesses. We will maybe pop champagne (cause why not?!) and play music loud and dance and sing.
For now, you’ll find us in the restaurant. Painting, laying flooring and planning. Always planning, because we don’t really know what’s around the next corner. We just hope you’ll be there with us. Thank you so much for your support this past year.
