Westmoreland County restaurants lean on combination of self, government help

After eight years of co-owning and operating J&M Export Deli, Michelle Gilson feels like it’s her first year all over again.

Gilson, with co-owner Jennifer Minnick, was forced to make several cost-saving changes to the Export-based deli over the past year — like reducing the staff by three employees and shortening hours of operation — after the covid-19 pandemic caused state leaders to issue mitigation orders that nearly gutted the restaurant industry.

“We’ve just been making ends meet,” Gilson said. “Not paying ourselves, just paying our bills.”

They got federal funds to help the restaurant through the pandemic, but Gilson said what they were awarded only helped for about a month. Now, women are pulling 50+ hour work weeks to keep the deli running as they get back on their feet.

Sharon Detar, owner of Connections Café in Ligonier, said she, too, was more focused on paying her bills than taking home a paycheck. To help save money, Detar said she shuttered the restaurant for six weeks at the start of the pandemic after realizing people were largely staying home.

When she reopened, she reduced operating hours and the hours of her single employee. Still, Detar worked to make the restaurant attractive to people ordering to-go meals by weatherizing a front porch on the building to include a carpet and fireplace so it could be utilized during winter months.

“Ligonier’s a tourist town, so the tourists weren’t here so that cut in, but the locals really supported me, so that was great,” Detar said.

Scenes similar to those in Export and Ligonier played out at restaurants across the region following a year in which they were subject to mitigation orders that started last March when restaurants could only be open for takeout. Since then, owners were at the mercy of the ever-changing orders that determined capacity limits and when alcohol could be served.

To help businesses, federal lifelines like stimulus money and initiatives such as the Paycheck Protection Program were implemented throughout the year. Detar noted she got money from the Westmoreland CARES grant, part of a federal stimulus package.

Greg and Christina Cammerata, owners of IronRock Tap House, largely utilized those funds to pay members of their management team who were covering takeout orders after the owners of the Hempfield restaurant were forced to lay off nearly 60 hourly employees throughout the year.

“To have to lay them off just because there’s not work, you just hate to do it because you know they have bills, and even though unemployment’s available, it’s a pain in the neck to go through all the paperwork and do that,” Greg Cammerata said. “We’re just thankful that the staff has stuck with us and we kind of came out the other side.”

In addition to federal funds, the Cammeratas — who opened the Hempfield restaurant in December 2019, three months before Gov. Tom Wolf issued the first shutdown related to covid-19 — also attributed their success throughout the pandemic to the fact that they do not rely on a paycheck from the restaurant.

Similarly, Sam Murray, owner of Salsa Sam’s, said he does not have loans on his Irwin restaurant, a factor that helped him through the pandemic. Murray, who largely became involved in the community when the pandemic hit, also attributed his success to takeout sales and getting involved with breweries and community events.

“We can honestly say it’s been OK because we kind of adapted to the situation,” Murray said. “I didn’t, per se, moan about it, whine about it. … I think what we did well out of all of this is we kind of got involved with the community, and that was so important.”

Murray noted he did not lay off any employees or utilize federal funding because “I wanted to keep those funds for the other restaurants that really, really needed them.”

As restaurant owners work to get back on their feet, long-term effects are beginning to trickle down in the form of a staffing shortage felt across most business segments.

The shortage is causing locally owned restaurants to continue to cut hours to give employees a break despite being able to open up at full capacity. Chain restaurants, however, are responding to the shortage by raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour at places such as Chipotle, while others, like McDonald’s, are offering a signing bonus.

“You can’t catch a break. … It’s just going to get busier and busier, and we got all this outdoor seating and that requires additional servers and what not to cover that, so it’s a tough time right now trying to get people, but we’re working hard at it,” said Greg Cammerata, noting that, as of mid-May, the restaurant had between 12 and 15 open positions.

Still, other restaurants like J&M Export Deli are not yet at the hiring phase. While Gilson said there is light at the end of the tunnel as catering sales begin to pick up, it is not enough to extend hours or return staff to what they were before the pandemic hit.

“It’s like building it back up again to be able to pay ourselves and then pay other people,” Gilson said.