Recession Has Bitter Taste for Restaurants : Westside: Business at hundreds of eateries is down 10%. You can even get a table at Spago.
As the saying goes, ya gotta eat.
And on the Westside, that often means going out to some of the trendiest, best and most expensive restaurants in the nation. After all, it’s hard to avoid them--they are one of the things the area is known for.
Westsiders still dine out here as do visitors from all over, of course, even with the recession in full bloom. The hot spot of the minute is always jampacked until something else takes its place, and many establishments have stayed as busy as ever.
But the economic downturn has indeed dealt a blow to the Westside restaurant industry, from family diners in Westchester to the bistros of Beverly Hills.
Heck, you can even get into Spago these days. And you probably won’t have to call ahead to get a table at DC3, where you can watch the planes land at the Santa Monica Airport over a plate of seared tuna, radicchio and baby carrots.
The recession has slowly whittled away many people’s spending money, and obliterated the discretionary income of others new to the unemployment line. Among the first things to go from their budget has been the table for two or three or four, and the chef’s special du jour, the bottle of Cabernet and the dessert to die for.
“The high-flying yuppies, for lack of a better term, are pulling back, because they’re finding their cost of living has gone up and their income hasn’t,” said Gerald Breitbart, a consultant to the Mid-Wilshire-based California Restaurant Assn. Others, he said, are staying home because they’re afraid they will fall victim to the recession too.
But no matter how bad things get, many Westsiders see their leisurely night at the local eatery as the one luxury they won’t give up. But even they are cutting back, going for the cheaper items, skipping the frills and even searching out restaurants with more affordable prices.
Breitbart said his informal surveys of the hundreds of Westside restaurants shows about a 10% drop in business over the past year.
“Remember, the restaurant is a convenience at lunch, and a way to entertain yourself at night,” Breitbart said. “So it’s often the first thing to go.”
And that applies to Hollywood’s see-and-be-seens as well as the Culver City family of five.
“Yes, we do feel it,” said Bernard Erpicum, maitre d’ at Spago, an airy place of legendary selectivity overlooking Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. For years the flagship of chef Wolfgang Puck’s burgeoning California Cuisine empire, Spago is notorious for courting the high and mighty while turning away ordinary customers for lack of room.
“Now, we have to be so much more on top of the reservations to keep the place full,” Erpicum said last week. “A few months ago, we never worried. Now we take any reservation we can get.”
At tony Michael’s in Santa Monica, business is off, and those that do come are spending less, said day manager Chris Kulow. Some couples still spend $500 for dinner, but others keep the tab to $45 apiece and skip the wine. Like other upscale establishments, Michael’s slashed its prices by 30% in late 1989 as the recession loomed and customers seemed reticent to splurge as they had before, Kulow said.
Other dining spots are dropping their prices, having specials, or changing their menus. Some are serving chicken instead of veal, and domestic mushrooms instead of exotic ones.
Business is off by about 20% at DC3 and similarly posh West Beach Cafe in Venice, said Bruce Marder, who owns both. But Marder said business is booming at his Broadway Deli in Santa Monica, a media darling since it opened last year, and Rebecca’s in Venice.
Business also is off at lower-priced restaurants, especially those that cater to families trying to cut back wherever they can.
“Every night, there used to be a half-hour, 45-minute wait,” said waiter John Patton as he surveyed the scene at Coco’s in Santa Monica one recent evening. “Now, well, you can see--no wait.”
Some, of course, are on the other end of the changes in dining behavior.
“Business has never been better,” said Jay Coffin, owner of the funky Jay’s Jayburgers fast-food stand on Santa Monica Boulevard in east Hollywood. “People are dropping down a notch, from expensive to moderate, and from moderate to me.”
There is little statistical evidence to gauge how restaurants are faring, and whether some are doing well at the expense of others.
Most restaurant proprietors won’t give particulars on how bad business is, fearing it would scare away diners.
What is clear, however, is that the recession’s impact on the Westside restaurant business has rippled through a vast segment of the local economy.
When fewer people eat out, waiters and waitresses get fewer hours and fewer tips. There is less work for chefs and cooks, and busboys, maitre d’s and valet parkers lose out, too. Some have been laid off, and nobody’s hiring.
And business up and down the long, complex and extremely competitive line of food wholesalers and distributors, shippers, packers and growers is down as much as 25%, said Seth Marshall, executive vice president of the Santa Monica Seafood Co. He said some wholesalers are now trying to cut out middlemen like him and go directly to restaurants to salvage profits.
Marshall said his company’s client base of as many as 200 Westside restaurants, gourmet markets and hotels has allowed him to get by with only a 10% drop in business. Even so, he said, “there’s been an incredible cost-cutting among all the seafood wholesalers, and we’ve all had to go along for the ride.”
