‘This Is Gonna Be Bad’: Rhode Island Restaurants Face Tough Road Ahead

The Malted Barley in downtown Westerly advertises delivery service. (Alex Nunes/The Public’s Radio)

A few months ago, Providence restaurateur James Mark was feeling more comfortable about his business than he ever had before. He’d finished building a bar at his highly regarded restaurant North and successfully launched a second restaurant, Big King.

The lucrative Spring graduation season was approaching, and Mark was expecting to see his investments pay off. Then coronavirus hit and turned his business upside down.

“I laid off all my staff.” Mark said. “It was just me left, and that was because I had less than a dollar—I had 67 cents—in my bank account. It feels like starting over, for worse.”

Now, like so many other restaurant owners, Mark is scrambling to see if he can stay in business at a time when he can’t legally serve sitdown customers. His accountant says he should just go on unemployment. Instead, Mark has hired back some staff and is trying to make a go at take-out.

But it’s a challenge. His normal business model is based on serving a certain number of dine-in customers and mark-ups on alcohol sales. Now he’s changing his business so fast he’s not even sure if it’s working, and he’s not optimistic about the future.

Read the rest of this story at The Public’s Radio’s website.