Dear Feastlings,
Here’s the long and short of it: seating people in the dining room or not (and we are working toward seating people in the dining room,) Feast is, like any other restaurant, basically hoping to run out the clock on the pandemic. If we can keep ourselves running until there’s a vaccine, or herd immunity, or some other dramatic change takes place before we hit the tipping point, we’ll still be here for you come the day we don’t have to wear a mask in the grocery store, or we can hug our family and friends again without trepidation. But as I watch other restaurants- nay, institutions in Tucson- reach the point at which they can no longer throw good money after bad into the money pit that a restaurant is, I’m acutely aware that we’re in the same position they are, only with a different comfort level.
If I were in the shoes of Suzana Davila of Cafe Poca Cosa or Janos Wilder of Downtown Kitchen + Cocktails, I’d likely have made the same decision they have- they’re already close to retirement, they’ve been doing this for years and they weighed the overwhelming amount of work it takes to stay open given the circumstances against how long it would take to recoup the money they’ve already had to shovel into their businesses and how much longer they realistically want to keep working in an already stressful and exhausting industry.
Whether or not we have our doors open to dine-in is nearly a moot point- when we get there, we’ll have 13 tables, one table less than we had when we were down the street and our rent was less than a third of what we pay here, so while it will most assuredly not hurt us, it won’t make ends meet. You’ve all been amazing, supporting us for eight months now by picking up food to go, joining our wine tastings and picking up a bottle or ten, and I can’t thank you enough for donating to our front line worker and other donation runs. The whole family here is moved by your kindness and generosity.
But today’s exhortation is a reminder to those of you who drink, or who occasionally give the gift of drink to someone who does: BevMo and Total Wine will be here in a year whether you shop there or not. They’ll be fine. Really. And I challenge you to compare their pricing to ours. It’s pretty much the same markup, and we beat them on a lot of wines as well. So I’m hoping you pick up your next bottle here.
We’re still offering the pandemic deal of 10% off a six-pack and 15%off a case of 12, mix and match, and we still have weekly and monthly tastings to boot. Here’s how it helps us: It’s entirely independent of how many seats we have in the dining room, it has a much longer shelf life than seafood or produce or most of what we have in the kitchen, and it keeps money coming through that we need to pay the staff, the utilities, the mortgage, the insurance, and on and on and on.
I got a little panicky yesterday when I saw how few people so far have called to participate in tomorrow’s wine tasting, and we got onto the subject of the bottle shop and the wine program here on the whole, so you’re stuck with reading what my hamster wheel is generating today. And it’s beverage. Here’s this week’s wine tasting:
and here’s the list of ALL our offerings:
and as long as I have your attention, here’s the Thanksgiving menu
and today’s menu as well:
And with that, I’m packing up to run food to another 116 front line workers at CODAC
and then coming back to work on next week’s special menu to accompany the first in a series of lectures and food at the Learning Curve
https://www.thelearningcurvetucson.com/classes/food-for-thought-a-feast-for-the-senses-session-1/
And then seeing whether Eric’s repair of the ice machine yesterday is still holding. Fingers crossed.
Your pal,
Doug