It's impossible for us to wrap our hands around the long-term impact of this disaster, but to give us some perspective on how it's impacting our local food businesses, we reached out to Dina Samson. Dina, along with her husband Steve, is the co-founder and owner of Rossoblu, Superfine Playa, and Superfine PIzza in Los Angeles. She also co-founded the Independent Hospitality Coalition, Regarding HER, and Feed Love LA, organizations focused on supporting and uplifting the LA food community.
Evan Kleiman: You are in such a unique position to help us understand the landscape here, both because of your background in finance, the fact that you're a multi-restaurant owner, and your experience with these independent restaurant groups. How was the restaurant community in the greater LA area faring before these fires started?
Dina Samson: Such a great question. You know, January is always a slow month for us in the restaurant community, but it was really a slow year for the restaurant community. So to come off of that, then to come off of a slow January start and then the fires, I mean, it's pretty devastating for a lot of us. But listen, at least we're still around, you know? I mean, there are people much worse off than we are, but I think it's just a matter of, how do we survive currently in this landscape?
What were your initial thoughts when you began to realize the scale of what was unfolding as the fire spread?
Our first thought is always, "What can we do to help?" That's where you saw all the people mobilize, feeding people, even paying out of their own pockets just to feed the first responders, to feed the people in the community that needed it. Even though my restaurants are struggling, it was the first thing we thought of.
Then, as your restaurants start to open for business, but people aren't coming, that's when you start to think, "Oh, wait, what's going to happen here? Are we going to be able to get through this?" But of course, we can't think that way, because we need to think about what's going on with our city. We're still kind of in a state of shock of, "What do we do next? And what can we expect?"
Obviously, for the restaurants that burned down, these are just tragedies, massive upheavals, this sudden loss of income for everyone who works there — cooks, servers, dishwashers. Are you hearing from a lot of owners about employees who have become much more vulnerable? What have you heard and seen?
Yeah, you know the owners that I know are trying to find their employees jobs. They're reaching out to anyone that they know that's in the industry, saying, "Do you have any positions open?" I think the problem is nobody can hire right now, right? Because we don't have guests coming to our restaurants I think some areas of the city are doing better than others, restaurant-wise. I've talked to friends in the South Bay, and they say that they're actually doing okay. I think some people that have been displaced are going south, trying to stay away from the fires, but everybody else kind of adjacent, we're really having problems.
Then there are restaurants that weren't anywhere near the fires, but are already seeing knock-on effects. For example, The Ruby Fruit, a wine bar in Echo Park, announced on Instagram just the other day that they're closing.
Yes, yes. You know our restaurants work on a very slim margin. I mean, sometimes you're payroll to payroll. I think we will see in the next two payroll periods here, probably in the next month or so, or six weeks, who can actually survive this downturn in business.
Can you give us an idea of what kinds of disaster relief resources are available now for restaurants either that are completely gone or that are in areas adjacent to fires and will be severely affected?
Thank you for asking. Regarding Her has been working on this, furiously trying to find resources for all of our members, but also just the restaurant community in general. First off, there is the SBA EIDL loan. That application process is open, so people should definitely start to sign up for that, even though they are not distributing money yet, at least to get in the queue, because who knows how much there's going to be left over from that.
There are some grants that people can apply for their employees, but then also for their businesses. If you go to Regarding Her on Instagram, they are all listed there. There's two for employees, food and beverage workers. There's another two for businesses, they're interest-free loans that the Jewish community organization has. And then there's also another community loan organization too. It's called TMC.