Economic Development | Arts & Culture | Culinary Arts | COVID-19
Three Sheets Owner Rick Seiden on Friday. He called the current system "death by a thousand cuts" when describing how much money the restaurant and bar has lost. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Three Sheets is still open. And they’re losing thousands of dollars per week.
Owners Rick Seiden and Ed Turschmann delivered that news Friday night, in an interview at the Elm Street restaurant and bar. Nine months into COVID-19, the two are hoping that the space can hold on through the winter months and come out alive in the spring. If not, they fear that it will become one in a growing number of empty storefronts downtown.
“We can't survive on what we're doing now,” Seiden said, leaning on the bar as the wood gleamed against his sleeve. “Our strategy is to try and find a way to at least tread water until spring. Spring is just another line to cross and then reassess.”
Sales are down 85 percent, which translates to thousands of dollars per week. Before March, it wasn’t uncommon to make that much in a single Saturday night.
“We have a discussion at least once a week to see if we can open the next week,” he said. “At the end of the week, we take a look at the numbers and decide if we can afford to lose that much money again. Most weeks, we don’t do what we would do on a Saturday.”
Three Sheets opened in 2013, after the short-lived Elm Bar announced that it would be closing. While Seiden and Turschmann never imagined owning a bar—they are longtime fishing buddies, as familiar with longshoremen as they are with aspiring rockers and seasonal IPAs—the two grew up sipping beers at 372 Elm St. when it was still the stalwart townie bar Rudy’s. When the space became available seven years ago, the two switched from commercial fishing to running a small food business.
Before March, business was good. After opening in 2013, the restaurant and bar became known for its hodge-podge of live music, monthly art exhibitions, sprawling tap list and unfussy but creative pub food. In the space where Seiden had once sipped beers in the 1990s, soft acoustic guitar and burgeoning indie bands were just as expected as drag benefits, jazz nights, and gritty punk rock. Before COVID-19, it wasn't uncommon to see a late-night crowd of local musicians and industry professionals gathering under the black sign outside, in a cloud of Sea Hag and cigarette smoke.
One of them, Laundry Day frontman and Free As Birds Records founder Alex Burnet, joked that he's still "chasing the high from the time Laundry Day blew the circuit box." Another, bartender Sara Scranton, decorated chalkboard menus and became a beloved fixture around town. She later wrote an op-ed about how much she misses New Haven during COVID-19.
Then the pandemic hit. From March through June, Seiden and Turschmann worked through the alphabet soup of federal relief, scoring a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan for $59,000 towards the end of round one PPP funding. By then, the bar had lost so much money that the loan was “gone before we got it,” Turschmann said. In pre-pandemic times, the bar made that amount in a few weeks. It had seven full-time employees and 11 part-time employees. Now it has three full-time in the kitchen, and three working just one shift per week, and Seiden.
They have tried to keep adapting. In the spring, Three Sheets signed onto the third-party delivery service DoorDash, which takes a large cut out of the total a customer pays for food and delivery. Friday, head chef Nick Firine called it “a necessary evil”—the restaurant has seen takeout orders pick up enough to justify the service, but not enough to cover lost profits. In August, Seiden and Turschmann also took an emergency disaster loan from the U.S. Small Business Association, which saddled them with a 30-year mortgage on a business that had, until this year, paid for itself.
"We owe more than we paid for the business," Seiden said. "I guess the biggest thing that the public needs to realize is that we're trying to pay 100 percent of our expenses at less than 35 percent of our allowable capacity. We're still paying for everything. Insurance is killing us. Rent is a huge expense, but it's also the landlord's income. Just cause we're not making money, it's not his fault."
He suggested that the city could do more to support the spot, including clearer messaging and free parking “until this mess passes.” Last month, officials from the city’s Economic Development Administration said that the city is looking at multiple models to help restaurants, from seeking caps on third-party delivery services to following something like Charleston’s “Adopt A Restaurant” program. The former has already taken effect in larger cities including New York and San Francisco.
Seiden added that the state has him walking an economic tightrope, trying not to lose his balance between limited capacity seating and the possibility of another complete shutdown. From June through late October, Three Sheets was working steadily towards recovery as Gov. Ned Lamont reopened the state’s economy in phases. Then the state rolled back to Phase 2.1.
As cases continue to rise across the state and the country—with no second federal stimulus package in sight—their profits have once again taken a nosedive. Both Seiden and Turschmann said they were shocked when Lamont kept restaurants open after Thanksgiving.
Chef Nick Firine Friday, in his element.
"It’s what they call death by a thousand cuts," Seiden said. He recalled arriving for work on a recent Monday afternoon and waiting for three and a half hours before the first customer of the day came in. The restaurant is open 47 hours per week, when staff used to work close to 80. Often, business only picks up later in the evening, just an hour or 90 minutes before a state-enforced, earlier closing time. Many of the customers that do come in get worked up when they learn that they have to order food with alcohol per Lamont’s executive order.
“As long as we are allowed to be open, we’re gonna try and be here and be open,” he added. “We’re gonna make it the safest environment that we can. We’re running everything on a skeleton tight system. But without another round of PPP, and at this point what would have to be some sort of grant money, I think that a lot of these local businesses that we see downtown are going to go away.”
As long as the place stays open, Firine and a shoestring staff are still turning out cauliflower bites, Nashville hot chicken, beet reuben sandwiches, tofu that is crisp and brown at the edges and a rotating cast of nightly specials. Friday, a pot of gumbo simmered beside sizzling kimchi and slices of roasted beet, steam rising into the kitchen as it came to a boil.
He isn’t going anywhere, he said: New Haven and the restaurant are his home. He grew up as the oldest of four kids in New Haven’s Hill neighborhood, just off Ella T. Grasso Boulevard. At Three Sheets, he worked his way up from dishwasher to head chef. When someone broke his car window and stole his knife kit last week, friends chipped in the money to replace it within just hours.
As he seasoned the beets, Firine bounced between stations in a black face mask, browning thick pieces of sourdough while keeping an eye on french fries and the bubbling soup. Earlier this year, there was a month where he was the only one in the kitchen, making every order that came in. He estimated that he sees 25 orders in “a good night,” and far fewer in a bad one. A normal night used to see three times that.
“I’m scared either way,” he said, tossing the fries with salt in a large silver bowl. “I’m just trying to do what I can. I’d rather see this place thrive, I’d rather see this place open as long as it can [be]. Earlier this year, I didn’t enjoy telling most of my staff I didn’t have a job for them. I’d just tell people to come out and support [local businesses], whether it’s us or it’s somebody else.”
Three Sheets New Haven is open Monday, Thursday & Friday 4 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. and Saturday & Sunday 12 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Find out more on their website or Facebook Page.