It’s easy to feel the buzz of a New York City’s vibrant Saturday night service. When you walk into a restaurant the music fills your body, the host greets you with a smile and escorts you to your table. You study the menu in hopes of filling your belly with delicious food. In a single hour, you can forget your worries, be taken care of, eat, and leave the restaurant feeling better than when you arrived. Over the last year, if you walked around Brooklyn that buzz we were all so used to, turned into a faint whisper. So many beloved restaurants were forced to shut their doors as they struggled to survive during the raging COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic affected everything from the borough’s most beloved coffee shops to local favorite bars and eateries. While residents yearn for the return of dining-in at 100% capacity post pandemic, restaurant owners want it much more.

Park Slope’s Quarter Bar is one of the few to pivot during the height of the pandemic in order to keep their doors open. “We closed for a couple of days in March [of 2020],” said David Moo, owner of Quarter Bar. “When we learned the rules, and how to adjust…we re-opened. We’ve been open in some form or another ever since. You have to be willing and able to pivot on a dime. There were rules that the government gave us seventy-two hours or less notice. Applications for loans were given hours notice. Even if you had other things to do that day, the loan [application] became priority. The whole thing has been crazy.”

As restaurants slowly re-open, one of the more difficult tasks for owners has been finding staff wanting to return to work as the pandemic still rages on. Last year staff at many restaurants in Brooklyn were told to file for unemployment without any idea of whether or not they would have a job in the future. Some restaurants were lucky enough to support their staff even after closing. “We were able to keep about sixty to seventy percent of our staff, the majority of the time. Even when we weren’t open,” said Adam Landsman, owner of Sunday in Brooklyn. “We were fortunate that we received PPE loans and were able to use that money intelligently, putting it into the pockets of a lot of our staff.”

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There have been some unexpected joys of such a horrible time. “As a result, and a really nice benefit that we hadn’t anticipated, we had been trying to promote some of the support staff, including runners and bussers, pre-pandemic,” Landsman continued. “Some of the support staff members have stepped into leadership roles that they probably wouldn’t have before the pandemic. Morale is at this incredible high right now.”

The moving pieces on any given night in a restaurant are sizable; from back of the house issues to front of the house issues. Now with strict COVID protocols, there are even more things that need to be monitored. “The restaurant on any given shift, it’s like a continuous improv,” Jennifer Nelson, managing partner of Buttermilk Channel expressed. “Now, we’re collectively doing that on a much bigger stage. The problem solver, the consummate host, the creative person in me, wants to keep trying to perfect what we are doing. That’s going to be happening for a long time.”

Because of restauranteurs ability to problem solve and quickly adapt, all is not lost. Places have survived and the ones that have endured are thriving and seeing some sense of return to normalcy. As vaccinations have been made widely available, mask usage continues, and COVID-19 cases drop, Brooklynites are back drinking cocktails at the bar, hugging staff members that they haven’t seen in over a year, or ordering to-go eats to continue the support. There’s a feeling of hope and relief in the air, that hasn’t been felt in a long time.