Seattle restaurants' creative strategies to weather the cold months of the pandemic

Meal and cocktail kits. Deliveries and takeouts. Temporary closures. There's no one approach that helps keep Seattle businesses afloat. Restaurants are using strategies that best suit them.

Seattle restaurants struggling to make ends meet during the pandemic got a brief reprieve last summer. Warm weather and expanded patio dining drew in customers and their dollars.

But now that it's turned cold and rainy, businesses are having to think creatively again about how they are going to weather the pandemic.

“If I don’t do my job right now, it costs people their jobs.”

Ivar’s, one of Seattle’s most familiar establishments, closed its full service restaurants—Acres of Clams and Salmon House—until spring.

“We spent the next five days putting them into hibernation,” said Ivar’s president Bob Donegan.

They took down cooking tools, equipment, and dishes; deep cleaned them, and put away them away for now.

Donegan says they had to close to conserve cash and hope to make it to Memorial Day next year. That meant furloughing 90 people, many of whom have been with Ivar’s for decades.

“We’ve been to their kids’ weddings, went to their birthday parties,” Donegan said. “And so to have a conversation with someone who has worked with you for a long time and say we’ve got to put you on furlough, that’s a very, very difficult conversation to have because it’s nothing that they’ve done wrong.”

Donegan says they’ve tried everything they could: They expanded the menus, even offered fried chicken. They offered pickup by the dock. Donegan says 70% of their pick up orders came from people on boats or kayaks.

But looking ahead, it’s going to be a hard winter. With a continued ban on large gatherings, it means banquets and holiday get-togethers, which would’ve kept people employed, are out for the time being. The two main restaurants may be on hiatus, but Donegan isn’t taking it easy.

“If I don’t do my job right now, it costs people their jobs.”

Ivar’s 25 stores and seafood bars will remain open. And its chowder plant which has been working nonstop, keeps Donegan busy.

“We’re a little bonkers everyday."

Some restaurants are taking a non-conventional response to the cold months. Earlier this month, Canlis, Seattle’s fine dining icon, launched Canlis Community College.

“We’re a little bonkers everyday,” said co-owner Brian Canlis.

Since the pandemic he and his brother Mark have been creative in their reinventions: a drive-thru burger, a bagel shed, and a crab shack this summer. But the online community college, their tenth concept to date, is more out of the box. Part of the idea came from concerned calls from out of state friends.

“Like, are you okay, I heard that you can’t even go out on the streets,” Canlis recalled. “And I’m like, 'Oh my gosh, we’re fine.' My kids and I have so much fun walking around, apparently, the anarchy.”

But the concerns persisted. As they were pondering their next project, school season was around the corner, Canlis says they wanted to do something to celebrate the sights and foods of the city.

“Mark and I said, what if the two of us, and our chef Brady, what if we go back to school and we invite the city to come along with us?”

The response has been tremendous. So far, 10,000 people have paid $25, extra for the prepared kits, to learn about the region’s wine, food, culture, and history. Proceeds will go toward fighting food insecurity, which has doubled in many counties since the pandemic. Canlis says this has been the hardest year of their work lives. But it’s been the most rewarding.

“We’ve gotten letters and emails from around the country from many restaurants and many people in the industry saying, please don’t stop. Like, you give us the courage to keep trying ridiculous ideas.”

The community college runs through Thanksgiving, complete with a final exam. If you’re curious what they’ll do next, an announcement is coming out in December.

“We’re still in survival mode.”

At Musang on Beacon Hill, owner Chef Melissa Miranda and her team are prepping for lunch service.

“When we last spoke we were in survival mode,” Miranda said. “We’re still in survival mode.”

The Filipino restaurant had only been open two months when the state’s stay at home order came out. Miranda pivoted to cooking emergency meals for families in need. As the county slowly reopened, Musang joined other businesses that offered outdoor seating.

The biggest lesson she’s learned this year is there are a lot of things beyond her control, so focus instead on what can be done.

“I think that the way we’ve maybe transformed our energy is and diverted this crisis into like, let’s just kind of look where we can make good out of the situation.”

Miranda says the pandemic has forced them to slow down and really think about how to take care of employees, especially during this time.

“We’ve started providing health insurance, which is super important, especially now. We’ve started providing 401K benefits and started really having deep conversations with the staff of like, what is future planning look like, and especially in a time of uncertainty is there a way to provide certainty in that?”

Musang will pause in January for construction work on their outdoor space. They hope to have the patio ready by spring. In the meantime, Miranda is busy. She is one of the new line up of chefs at Bon Appetit’s Test Kitchen. Closer to home, she’s collaborating with other local businesses. Recently, Miranda taught a class in making lumpia, or Filipino spring rolls, at the Canlis Community College.

“So we were able to share our grandmother’s lumpia recipe … and you know, people were tagging us in their stories on Instagram and I just had this moment like, our food is in people’s homes. And I cried.”

In a time like this everyone’s helping each other out.