One of the most positive innovations of the last few months has been the formation of the Independent Restaurant Coalition (IRC). The group came together a few weeks into the pandemic to help independent restaurants collaborate and advocate effectively for their needs in Washington. While the headlines and aid packages have historically gone to big businesses and easy-to-identify national chains, the idea behind the IRC was that the needs of independent restaurants, or small restaurants groups like the ZCoB, needed to be called out as the special places that they are. Let’s face reality—this is not an easy situation for anyone. And on the economic front, small businesses have a particularly difficult row to hoe. sources in the industry are speculating that somewhere between 25 and 70 percent of restaurants in the U.S. will not reopen.

The Coalition, which includes some of the nation’s top dining establishments—Rick Bayless from Frontera Grill in Chicago, Tom Colicchio of Craft in NY, Katie Button from Asheville—makes the case: “Independent restaurants directly employ 11 million workers and indirectly employ tens of millions more up and down the food and hospitality supply chain. We are small businesses but have a big impact on the economy with $1 trillion contributed to the economy each year and 4% of GDP.” And yet, restaurants bring an enormous amount of community connection—food for the soul as well as the stomach. They’re important parts of their communities. I feel honored to be part of this special community here! And I know that the other members of the Coalition play comparably positive parts of the cities, towns, and neighborhoods in which they work. As my friend Sara Fetbroth from Oleanna restaurant in Boston writes: “I truly believe hospitality can change the world. If everyone’s goal was to be other-centered and take care of each other, imagine how happy and healthy life would be! Food, the table, and hospitality are the most universal of languages, so what better environment to spread the love?”

If there’s a positive out of all this, I will say that the connections that have come from the work of the IRC have already been really rewarding for me and for others. The organization has, in a matter of months, successfully put the independent perspective into the national conversation. Recently, three IRC members went to the White House to speak personally on behalf of independents (like us) to the President in a televised setting that would typically have included only CEOs of big, publicly traded companies. And Congressman Blumenauer of Oregon has introduced a bill with the acronym RESTAURANTS that puts forward for legislative approval most all of the points that the IRC has been advocating for. Keeping alive in a pandemic is already a challenge for all of us as individuals. Keeping communities healthy as we all come back from it is, I believe, important as well. Helping independent, locally run, restaurants around the country to keep going through this and come out the other side is also important. Check out the IRC website, sign up for the newsletter and sign on to send letters to senators and Congressfolk to share your support! Every little bit makes a difference!

—Ari

P.S. Since I wrote this piece, all of these people have co-sponsored the bill:
Blumenhauer Cosponsor; Rep. Fitzpatrick, Brian K. [R-PA-1]; Rep. Bonamici, Suzanne [D-OR-1]; Rep. Evans, Dwight [D-PA-3]; Rep. Kuster, Ann M. [D-NH-2]; Rep. Panetta, Jimmy [D-CA-20]; Rep. Pingree, Chellie [D-ME-1]; Rep. Smith, Adam [D-WA-9]; Rep. Welch, Peter [D-VT-At Large]; Rep. Wild, Susan [D-PA-7]; Rep. Axne, Cynthia [D-IA-3]; Rep. Craig, Angie [D-MN-2]; Rep. Khanna, Ro [D-CA-17]; Rep. King, Peter T. [R-NY-2]; Rep. Case, Ed [D-HI-1]; Rep. Neguse, Joe [D-CO-2]

Over the 38 years we’ve been in business, I’ve worried about, talked through, and planned for hundreds of strange scenarios. I’m a planner, and here at Zingerman’s we’ve been forecasting and budgeting and organizing for probably 30 years now. But, as Mike Tyson once famously said, “Everyone has a plan ’til they get punched in the mouth.” 

I don’t think anyone I know in the food world has ever thought about preparing for a pandemic. Having talked to dozens of colleagues around the country, we all seem to be struggling to answer the same questions: How do we deal with unexpectedly having to lay off dozens/hundreds/thousands of people that we’ve worked with for years? Are we providing better community service by staying open? Or by closing? Can we figure out what the 900 pages of the CARES Act mean? How long will this go on? If it doesn’t end for a year, how do we handle that? If it does end, what will happen next? Just writing down the questions, I can see why I—and probably most of us—have felt overwhelmed, pretty much daily, for the last few weeks. 

On Tuesday, March 11, we had a fundraising dinner at Zingerman’s Roadhouse—the closing event in our 5th Annual “Jelly Bean Jump Up” campaign to raise money for SafeHouse Center, the local shelter for victims of domestic abuse. It was a great event. We sold out the 60 or so seats, and it capped a month of fundraising that far exceeded our goal of $30,000. The next morning, Wednesday, March 12, is probably a day that will live in infamy in at least the food world for a few decades. Almost every restaurant in the country felt a shock that I can only equate to the stock market crash on October 29, 1929. For some, like those in Seattle, it started a bit earlier. For others, a little later. But basically, one day things were relatively fine—we were dealing with not being able to hire enough people, performance issues, food-cost challenges, getting ready to roll out some new products . . . the usual. The next day we were addressing problems most of us had never even thought of. 

It’s only been just over four weeks, but it seems like four years. Who would imagine that we’d already have adjusted our sales expectations down so much that what we’re now celebrating as a “good day” a month ago would have passed for a so-so Monday lunch? 

As a history major, two thoughts play around in my head. One is that it’s generally said that no war with a foreign power has ever been fought on American soil. The Civil War, of course, was a conflict between American citizens. And small acts of violence that haven’t historically been classed as “wars” have been happening to folks on the short end of the social stick every day for centuries. While we’ve all read articles about the horror of war in northern Syria, of bombs dropping on Bosnian cities, or about farmers trying to make a living growing almonds in war-torn Afghanistan, most of us who’ve lived our lives in the U.S. are fortunate to have never experienced that daily fear and vulnerability firsthand. This situation feels, as best I can imagine, a small fraction of what that might be like. Yes, there were “storm clouds” on the horizon for a while as stories came in from China and Italy about the virus. But, one hopes and believes that, of course, that “won’t happen here.” And, yet, it did. One day things were fine; the next day . . . they were more messed up than most of us could have imagined. 

I haven’t lived through one so I’m not sure the analogy is accurate, but this does feel sort of like what I imagine living through a war would be. Life, as we knew it for years, has been drastically altered. Stable “successful” organizations all over the country were suddenly, sadly, laying people off. The health care system is overwhelmed. When I read about and talk to health care workers, it sounds like stories of working at the front in a war zone—not enough people, not enough supplies, choices to be made about who lives and who dies. As in a foreign invasion, we struggle to know who might be an “enemy” agent. We’ve started eyeing everyone we see on the street as a potential “saboteur” who could be carrying the infection. “Curfews” have been imposed. We don’t know how long this will go on for. We don’t really know what to do. The craziness of the restaurant world that we all love and have learned to live with, the variability in pretty much everything we’ve all worked with and actually kind of enjoy . . . now seems stable and calm compared to this world where the Coronavirus is calling the shots and we hope and pray that we, our colleagues, and our businesses can survive. In the food business, we’ve always worried about food safety and worked with the knowledge that we carry our customers’ lives in our hands. But this is at a whole new level. I certainly never imagined I was going to go through something like this in the course of my lifetime. And yet, here we are. I try to imagine what it must have been like to own a community-focused restaurant in Paris in 1940. Some came out on the other side, some didn’t. How did they survive? What can we learn from them? 

The other piece of history in my mind is that, while none of us have been through this before, humanity has, and many times over. Annalee Newitz wrote a great piece in The New York Times recently about the history of the bubonic plague in 1666 in London. It was the worst plague since the Black Death had struck back in 1348. London lost over 15% of its population over the course of a year. Roughly 100,000 died in London; 750,000 died in England overall. Newitz’s article reminded me of what I already knew: history always repeats. The description of what was happening in London in 1666 when the plague struck all now sounds eerily familiar, equally serious, and at least as difficult. The similarities are striking. (On a light note, Newitz shared that Samuel Pepys buried a wheel of “Parmazan” cheese in his backyard when the city was evacuated.) The good, long term, learning from Newitz’s article is that, as we know, the world did keep going when the plague receded. While it was a horrible year, and things didn’t just return to normal quickly, clearly, England did recover. The plague did go away. And there were restaurants still operating at the end of it. 

Throughout our own history of Zingerman’s, we have worked through massive inflation, the tragic upheaval of 9/11, the instability of the recession of 2009 . . . In all of those cases, looking back, I can see that we survived—through the fear and uncertainty—by staying true to our values, taking good care of our customers, communicating caringly with our crew, staying in touch with vendors, and maintaining quality. We continued to talk things through collaboratively, to work cooperatively, to stay as grounded and centered as we could under the circumstances. If I’d gone to med school like my grandmother wanted me to, I might be trying to save lives in a hospital or doing research in a lab to find a vaccine or a cure to end this crisis. Unfortunately, I have nothing to contribute to either of those. So, I’ll continue to work to keep our community and our organization as healthy as possible. Try to figure out creative and caring ways through the darkness. Try to listen and be empathic and share struggles as best I can. I’ll continue to call colleagues all over the country, hoping that someone else who’s smarter has come up with some great solutions. And then keep my fingers crossed, think positive thoughts, rub my rabbit’s feet, and, as with all long walks through darkness, hope like hell we can get through to the other side together. 

Here at Zingerman’s, we’re still doing takeout and delivery from our three restaurants—sales are running at about a third or a bit more of what we’d normally be doing. Our Bakehouse isn’t down quite that much thanks to wholesale sales to supermarkets and to our Mail Order. Wholesale is hanging in there at our artisan Creamery, Candy, and Coffee businesses. Our training business, ZingTrain, is, of course, decimated. The bright note for us is that our Mail Order is very busy. And that we’re still being kind and collaborative and cooking and delivering good food. For now at least, for us, and for so many others, that’s our new normal. That fundraiser on the evening of March 11 seems like lightyears ago. Eventually, like WWII and like the Plague, this will start to end. Every day I wait to hear good news. At some point, there will be some. When it does come, we can say something along the lines of what Winston Churchill said as the British turned the tide of a very long war by defeating the Germans in Egypt in 1942. “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” 

Whatever happens, I feel incredibly fortunate to have worked with so many great people both here in our own organization and in the food community across the country and around the world. To have bought, sold, served, and eaten so much good food, to have had a positive impact on so many people’s lives. I’m not ready to give up yet. As one of our line cooks shared from her work at a previous job, on really rough shifts they used to say to each other, “See you on the other side!” 

*The title is taken from the 1981 song, “Things Fall Apart,” by the artist Cristina, released a few months before we opened the Deli. It was on regular play around my house back in those days. Sadly Cristina passed away, on April 1, from Coronavirus. The lyrics of the song are shockingly poignant for the present situation.

The kitchen table is now the urgent center of many of our lives. We’ve always gathered around the table together to eat, to sustain, to grow, to share our lives with each other. Now the act of eating together has suddenly become one of the few communal pleasures we are able to enjoy.

Zingerman’s Community of Businesses are committed to staying open wherever we can. Feeding you has always been a call to service. Today it’s a calling we come to with a greater sense of responsibility than ever. We are committed to safely making, selling and delivering good food. We are adamantly following every hygiene practice guideline the experts give. We’ve always offered our crew paid time off when they need it and full health insurance and that’s no different now.

We are doing all this so the food supply keeps flowing, so our food makers and farmers can keep producing, so our crew who freely choose to work can get paid and enjoy the benefits that work provides. We have chosen to be a part of this great community we live in and we want to serve it great food as best we can.

Decades ago the employees of Zingerman’s came together to write our mission statement. It feels like long ago, but what we created never felt timelier.

We share the Zingerman’s Experience
Selling food that makes you happy
Giving service that makes you smile
In passionate pursuit of our mission
Showing love and caring in all our actions
To enrich as many lives as we possibly can.

Zingerman’s Delicatessen:
Pickup & local delivery for you or a loved one
11am-7pm every day

SANDWICHES
zingermansdeli.com
(734) 663-3354
Your favorite sandwiches, sides, salads & soups

GROCERIES
zcob.me/deligrocery
(734) 926-4005
Bread, meats, cheeses, coffee, tea & specialty foods

AT HOME MENU
zingermanscatering.com
(734) 663-3400
Hearty breakfasts, comforting dinners, snacks & more, ready to warm in your own home (plus beer & wine!)

Miss Kim:
misskimannarbor.com
OPEN for takeout and delivery orders every day from 12pm to 8pm
Give us a call (734) 275-0099
Order to pick up at MissKimToGo.Square.Site or with the Snackpass app
Or Delivery with GrubHub or EatStreet

Zingerman’s Coffee and Candy Co.:
zingermanscoffee.com
Coffee, Toast, and Candy available for carry out and curbside pickup from 7am – 4pm daily!
Give us a ring at (734) 929-6060 to place a curbside order
Order pick up with the Snackpass app 

Cream Top Shop:
Cheese, gelato, salads, and grilled sandwiches available for carry out 11a-6p daily.
See the menu at zingermanscreamery.com and call (734) 929-0500 to place your order.

Zingerman’s Bakehouse:
Freshly baked bread and pastries, packaged soups, sandwiches, and salads ready for you to enjoy at home from 7am-7pm daily! Walk-in and curbside pick up. See the menu at zingermansbakehouse.com and call (734) 761-2095 to place your order! 

Zingerman’s Roadhouse:
On the Road Delivery
Stay at home, we’ll come to you!
Lunch & Dinner – 6 mile radius
Online Menus:  www.zingermansroadhouse.com/menus
Sun-Thu  11am-8pm
Fri-Sat 11am-9pm
(734) 663-3663

Roadshow Drive-Thru
Order ahead, drive on up, stay in your car!
Online Menus:  www.zingermansroadhouse.com/menus
(734) 663-3663
Sun -Thu 7am-8pm
Fri & Sat 7am-9pm

Zingerman’s Cornman Farms:
Stock up your freezer with delicious, farm-fresh meals by Chef Kieron!
Order online: shop.zingermanscornmanfarms.com
Pick up: Thursdays, 4-7pm at Zingerman’s Mail Order

Zingerman’s Mail Order:
zingermans.com
Shipping food everywhere in America, including meats, cheeses, chocolates and more.

Friends, colleagues, customers, community,

I’ve been holding off a bit on writing something over the last week. In the flood of messages about the Coronavirus (Covid-19), I keep waiting to be able to offer some new insight, a more holistic approach, or better still—a solution. I alternate between wishing it wasn’t happening (denial) and wishing I could tell you that eating more bacon, rye bread, barbecue, or brownies kept you from getting it (magical thinking). Unfortunately, neither of those is true. This is clearly very, very serious stuff, to which no one, least of all me, has the answers. 

The situation, as you already know as well as I do, continues to change by the hour.  As we go forward, we will continue to check CDC and Health Department updates and immediately work to adhere to their recommendations. What I do know right now as I write is:

1. Everyone at Zingerman’s is taking this extremely seriously. We’re doing everything possible to prevent the spread of Coronavirus in our businesses. All of the things that you’ve read online—because we’re reading the same CDC messages everyone else is—have been actively implemented in all of our businesses. While each Zingerman’s business has its own specific applications, everyone is doubling—nay, quadrupling down—on all of the strict sanitation practices we have always adhered to. More aggressive—near-constant—handwashing, wiping down of surfaces (chairs, counters, doors, door handles, etc.) with sanitizer, proper temperature controls, and wariness of cross-contamination (we don’t want to forget while the headlines are rightly focused on the virus that is disrupting the entire world, basic food safety rules are all still imperative). We have additional sanitizer in all the businesses and are using it—as everyone else is—at record rates.
2. We are—as we have since we first opened—doing the best we can to provide a positive, supportive, and healthy workplace for our coworkers. As always—more now than ever—we encourage folks who feel even “sort of sick” not to come to work. We know this is very real. And we have a major obligation to do our part in holding the virus at bay as best we can.
3. We have had paid time off for our staff for so long I can’t remember when we started it. We have always allowed folks to take additional time off as well. We have provided health care benefits for over 20 years now. We have a long list of other benefits we offer, which I won’t repeat here. We also have long had—at Paul’s suggestion many years ago—a Community Chest which is a fund available (in confidence) to staff members in crisis. None of these are shared to imply we’re so great, but merely to answer the questions in the news about employees being able to get through this situation without having to work when they’re ill. This week we just added a temporary boost in PTO possibilities for staff in anticipation of the struggles that will come for folks as they work to get through this.  Realistically, given what we know, this will not be enough for folks. While we’re “big” by some standards, we’re still a small business by the world’s standards and the resources don’t match up to what we’d ideally like to be able to do. We’re hoping that Federal or State governments will come through with aid and support for our staff.
4. We’re encouraging staff to stay healthy in proactive ways—the positive work we need to do to take care of ourselves. Everything I read, and my own physicians, regularly tell me that a good diet, exercise, plenty of sleep, vitamins, and effective hydration all help boost immune systems.  And right now, we’ll take all the help we can get.
5. We’re all in this together! We have over 700 people who are part of the Zingerman’s Community, including 18 managing partners and over 200 staff members who own a share in the organization. Paul and I started the Deli in 1982. (Coincidentally, March 15 was our 38th anniversary, though needless to say, there weren’t any big organizational celebrations this year.) We would never have made it out of that first uncertain year without YOU. From Day One, Paul and I have both strongly believed—known, actually—that we need our customers and our coworkers more than they need us. And that our work has always been to give people really good reasons to want to come shop, eat, and work with us. That remains true today, clearly, with some new challenges in the mix. We are working hard, every day, together, to figure out how we can serve you all in what, at least for the next few months and maybe much longer, is the new normal.

I know many of you won’t believe it, but I’m actually a totally shy introvert who would prefer to stay home on my own. “Social distancing,” for me, is my normal state. What’s hard for me isn’t being away from people—it’s going out in public. But at the same time, when I don’t see you all, paradoxically, and very positively, I miss you! Priya Parker, in her fine book, The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters, shares in her preface that “My hope is that this book will help you think differently about your gatherings.” Given the state of the current situation we’re all in—together—our work is to figure out how to help all of us to think differently about how to gather while still being safe and sanitary. 

Clearly, the news and understanding of the virus is changing almost hourly. Like every other caring leader you know—and the odds are you know many—we’re doing our best to respond as quickly, caringly, and effectively as possible. After conferring with the Washtenaw County Health Dept and a number of physicians we have decided to keep our businesses open. By doing so, we help provide the sort of comforting place that we have for the last 38 years. We help our staff stay employed. We help support the many small artisans we buy from and keep their staff employed as well. 

Some folks in town will understandably and appropriately choose to stay home right now. The good news is that we can still serve you and offer you full-flavored, traditional food, and a positive Zingerman’s Experience in a wide range of ways: 

• The Deli and Miss Kim have already been using delivery services and will continue to. 
• The Roadhouse is now offering food and wine delivery. 
• The Roadshow has been a steady source of drive-through food and drink for 15 years now—you don’t even have to get out of your car! (Bottles of wine are 30% off when you buy them through the Roadshow!). Swing by and grab some good food to go!
• The Deli has curbside pick-up service so you can get food without leaving the car. Groceries or sandwiches, bread, or brownies, olive oil or cheese. Call ahead and pick up! 
• The Bakehouse Bakeshop, Coffee Co., and Cream Top Shop have pick-up service as well at Zingerman’s Southside. Call ahead and let us know and we’ll bring your order from the shops out to your car.
• The Deli’s Catering and Events have delivery available every day at no added cost through April 20. The Roadhouse catering crew offer delivery too. Obviously big groups are out but . . . small ones? 
• Cornman Farms’ Pie & Mash, which runs through April 5, now has drive-thru pie pick up!
• Oh yeah, if you want to feed your mind, ZingTrain can deliver webinars, books, pamphlets and the like without you having to leave your house! 
• And . . . Zingerman’s Mail Order, by definition, is all about getting good food to folks. You don’t need to really get close to anyone to have access to good things to eat. You can have food delivered in town too!

In our 38 years, we’ve been through massive inflation, recession, 9/11, 2009. We will figure out—together, all of us—how to get through this. If we can be of help in any way at all, please let us know. Even if you just want to talk, we’d love to hear from you. Call, email, drive by for pick up.

Thank you for letting us be part of this incredible community for all these years. Thank you for the chance to serve you. Thank you for being patient with us and with each other and with the universe while we all figure this out. As many of you remind me, and I remind others, we’re gonna get through this. Together. 

Sending good thoughts to you and everyone!

March 18, 2020