Restaurant owners in eastern suburbs brace for change next month with cautious optimism

Restaurant owners in the area are bracing for yet another change to operations come next month. 

This time, though, they are welcoming the change as it means coming one step closer to pre-pandemic days, even if it presents a new challenge of finding staff to meet a potential uptick in customers.

Gov. Tom Wolf said March 15 that bars and restaurants can resume bar service, sell alcohol without a food purchase and operate at 75% capacity beginning April 4. The curfew on alcohol sales also will be lifted, meaning bars and restaurants can return to selling alcohol past 11 p.m. Bar service has been prohibited since last year, and food purchases have had to accompany alcohol sales.

“It’s a good move,” said Brian Leri, executive chef at Hoffstot’s Café Monaco in Oakmont. “It should help a lot of places, especially small places.”

Leri hopes Wolf’s easing of capacity restrictions means more people dine out at his place along Allegheny Avenue. But he also hopes he can properly staff it.

“The one thing that’s a bad thing right now is the staffing,” he said. “The staffing is horrible in all these restaurants and bars everywhere in hospitality. There’s a lot of jobs and nobody wants them. Everybody’s staying home collecting (unemployment). That’s going to be a major issue when they open at 100%. We’re not going to have the people.”

Hoffstot’s had various drive-thru takeout specials in its nearby parking lot to help with revenue and support the staff.

Leri believes allowing bar service will be a boost for business, however, he does not think there will be much change in the dining room because of the 6-foot restriction still in place.

Chuck Mohan, owner of Mohan’s Restaurant in Penn Hills, said he is anxiously looking forward to operating under the new rules.

He said he laid off 23 of 38 people from his staff last March. He now has 22 back, but he also has worries about getting people back to work.

“That’s going to be the next challenge,” he said.

Mohan expects a possible “mad rush” to get inventories and products restocked for the uptick in business, but he’s trying to predict how much of a rush there will be after a year of new norms.

“Are people really going to go back to going out? We’ve noticed a big increase in third-party delivery services — Uber Eats, Doordash — I just wonder how much of that convenience factor will stay, where people will say, ‘Let’s stay home and watch a movie and call Doordash,’ ” he said.

Still, the new rules will be a good thing and a step in the right direction, said John Palmieri of Palmieri’s Restaurant in Plum.

“It’s a definitely a plus for everybody,” he said. “We’re in a little bit different situation. We’re not like a regular bar that solely depends on alcohol sales. We do have a big dining room and takeout and so on and so forth. That does help everything, and the bar service will help, too, because people can have a drink without worrying about ordering food.”

The dining room seats about 100 people under the current restrictions. Some tables were shifted up to the bar to assist with capacity concerns, and there are no plans to change the layout as of yet.

Palmieri said he does not anticipate much of an increase in customers in the restaurant because of the social distancing restrictions. Available dining room tables have been spaced out at 6 feet for about year.

He does think there will be more families wanting to rent out the banquet hall with the decline in covid cases and more people being vaccinated.

“It will help everybody,” Palmieri said. “Some will help large, and some will help minimally. It just depends on what position you’re in.”

Radomir Klipa, executive chef at The Wooden Nickel in Monroeville, said the changes will help his restaurant, which has suffered through takeout orders — a change that did not cater well to a restaurant that depends on the experience of dining out.

“We’re not much of a takeout place. It’s more about the ambience and the good quality food and experience. … Our freezer is about the size of a residential fridge,” he said. “We do everything fresh. Over the last year, I’ve thrown more food away than I ever had to.”

The restaurant, nestled between two national chain restaurants along Stroschein Road and Monroeville Boulevard, made about $5,000 in the month of May. The majority of the sales came through on Mother’s Day, Klipa said. The restaurant, before pandemic days, did around $100,000 in sales every month before expenses, the 30-year-old chef said.

The restaurant has called back its staff of 25 and has been fortunate to get everyone back except a couple of kitchen workers who moved out of state, Klipa said.

“And once some of our regulars heard about the news, I got texts about them being excited to be back,” he said. “So we’re just rolling with the punches and taking it day by day.”

Dillon Carr and Michael DiVittorio are Tribune-Review staff writers. You can contact Dillon at dcarr@triblive.com and Michael at mdivittorio@triblive.com.