Tables back up against a column at Oceana restaurant in Midtown Manhattan.
Paul Goguen/BloombergNick Livanos, whose family owns three restaurants in Manhattan including the flagship Oceana in Midtown, expects to make it through a brutal downturn that is ravaging the city’s restaurant industry. But he says that politicians need to help by allowing indoor dining in New York City.
Despite persistently low numbers of Covid-19 cases in New York City, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio indefinitely delayed the start of indoor dining that had been due to begin in July, citing the risk of the virus spreading.
“It will be a slow death for the industry” if the situation doesn’t change, Livanos says. The city permits outdoor dining, but not indoors.
His family’s Livanos Restaurant Group also owns two restaurants—City Limits in White Plains and Moderne Barn in Armonk—in Westchester County, north of the city, where indoor dining is permitted. There, business is better, he says, and there haven’t been any health problems. “It’s actually easier to control the interior better than outside.”
The situation for restaurants will get more serious in October, when it starts to get too cold for outdoor dining in New York.
Livanos Restaurant Group, which also owns Ouisa on the far west side of Manhattan and Molyvos in the theater district, now employs 100, down from 450 before the pandemic. Revenue this year may be off 70% from the high $20 million area that the group had in 2019.
“We’re losing money, but are doing better than many others,” Livanos says. It may take until 2022 to get to 2019 levels.
With Oceana, the family decided to accelerate a planned renovation of the 300-seat restaurant in June. It will reopen after Labor Day. Oisia is open for outdoor dining, with plenty of sidewalk space, but Molyvos remains closed because of subway construction outside the restaurant on Seventh Avenue—reflecting the frustrations of business owners with infrastructure improvement in the city.
“The street is all dug up. It’s a mess. We won’t open it until there is indoor dining,” Livanos says.
Unlike many restaurant owners, Livanos has gotten cooperation from its Manhattan landlords. “We have nothing but good things to say about them,” he says, noting that they include the Durst family and Rockefeller Group.
He says their flexibility may stem in part from the fact they are private and can take a longer-term view, in contrast with public real-estate investment trusts focused more on the near-term bottom line. Barron’s examined the challenges facing three big New York REITs in this weekend’s magazine.
“The governor and the mayor have to look at the bigger picture,” Livanos says. Allowing indoor dining will help the industry, make it more desirable for Manhattan workers to return to the office, and make the streets busier—and safer. “It’ll be a positive chain reaction.”
Write to Andrew Bary at andrew.bary@barrons.com
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New York Restaurant Owner Warns of ‘Slow Death for the Industry’ Unless There Are Changes - Barron's
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