The Daily - How a Small Bar Battled to Survive the Coronavirus: An Update

Episode Date: December 28, 2020

This week, The Daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year and checking in on what has happened in the time since they first ran.When Jack Nicas, a technology reporter for The Times, first moved to California five years ago, he set about finding a local bar of choice. Unpretentious, cheap and relaxed, the Hatch fit the bill.Over six months during the coronavirus pandemic, he charted the fortunes of the bar and its staff members as the lockdown threatened to upend the success of the small business.Today, Jack checks in with the bar’s owner — Louwenda Kachingwe, known to everyone as Pancho — to see what has happened since we last heard from him in the fall.Guest: Jack Nicas, a technology reporter for The New York Times. For an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. You can read the latest edition here.Background reading: Here’s the full article about the Oakland tavern and its staff members as they try to weather the fallout from the pandemic.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily

Hey, it's Michael. This week, The Daily is revisiting our favorite episodes of the year, listening back and hearing what's happened in the time since they first ran. Today, The Hatch. It's Monday, December 28th. From The New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Across the country, nearly 100,000 small businesses have now shut down permanently because of the pandemic. Federal relief funding has stalled. And yet some cities are now preparing for a second round of shutdowns. Today. For the past six months,

my colleague Jack Nickus has been documenting the experience of a single neighborhood bar in the Bay Area of California to understand the consequences for its owner, bartender, and cleaner. It's Tuesday, October 6th. Jack, tell me about The Hatch. So The Hatch is the classic neighborhood bar. I moved to Oakland in late 2015, and one of the first things you do when you move to a new city is you find your local dive bar, at least if you're me. And pretty quickly, I knew it would be The Hatch.

It's just a really perfect neighborhood bar in my view. It's unpretentious, relaxed. The beer is cheap. You can always find a seat. And I ended up just spending a lot of time there. You know, my friends and I would gather around the uneven tables upstairs and spend long nights talking until close. And we'd watch the NBA playoffs on a bed sheet that hung from the ceiling. And we just, we made it our place. Good morning. Thank you for joining us here on Mornings on 2. It is Tuesday, March 17th. Bars, nightclubs, and restaurants closed at midnight.

So when the pandemic hit and I realized that small businesses across the country were going to close, my mind went to the hatch and I decided, let me follow this place for a few months and see what happens. And so I check in on the hatch on March 17th. This is the day after Gavin Newsom, California's governor, has ordered the state's bars and restaurants to close. So, yeah, why don't we just, do you mind if I record, by the way? Yeah, yeah, sure, cool. And when I get there, I find the bar's owner, Luenda Kachingwe. Everyone calls him Poncho.

And he's packing up the bar's booze and basically is in the early hours of trying to figure out what to do with his bar. And it's a moment of enormous uncertainty. I think the way that I've been processing it is, what can we do to stay open in some capacity, right? And so you guys are going to pursue this. You're going to do the takeout. We're going to try. So at this point, he's thinking of moving to takeout,

and it's pretty much the only option available for bars and restaurants besides shutting down. We're going to see what it looks like, what it entails. I have no clue still, right? I'm just like, well, what does that look like? I'm curious what you're thinking at this point about whether Pancho's going to be able to pull this off. Well, I'll say that when I first met Pancho, he actually struck me as sounding pretty relaxed about everything that was going on. And I didn't really know him, but as I learned his story, I got the sense that this is a guy who really has had to figure out how to deal.

Yeah, so I was born in Chegutu, and that's basically... Chegutu, and that's basically... Pancho grew up in the 1980s in a rural village in Zimbabwe, and he was the youngest of 13 kids. And when he was 10 years old, his dad, who was an academic, got a job at the University of Iowa. His siblings were much older than him, and he traveled alone with his parents across the world to Iowa. So we get there and we are the only Black family there, right?

And people would be like, you talk funny, right? And they're like, why do you talk funny, right? And I'm just like, all these things where I was so unsure of myself. Then at 14 years old, something pretty drastic happened. Which is what? At that point in time, there was some sort of dysfunction that was happening in the family, right? That to this day, I still have no clue what happened. So when he was 14, his mother came to him rather suddenly one afternoon and said,

I'm going back to Zimbabwe and I don't want you to see your father anymore. We're splitting up. Wow. I'm going back to Zimbabwe and I don't want you to see your father anymore. We're splitting up, but I have rented an apartment for you, paid the rent for a few months and here's some spending money and you're going to live on your own. And I was like, okay. And she's like, I packed your stuff. Let's go. Yeah. We're already set up. Right. So it was kind of well, surreal for one. Right. and the way that i was like wait what happened you know suddenly you know he was a 14 year old kid living on his own

how were you making do were you going to groceries or takeout and what were you doing no i had like uh two or three dishes that i knew how to make like i know like pasta and eggs that's like my go-to right and like the best peanut butter sandwiches ever so that was just it and then like whatever we had at school like whatever school lunches that were happening um i would do like the frozen dinners like i learned how to budget really early on i was like i'm gonna budget and just be like what can i eat that can actually last me a long time right so he would wake up in the morning alone as a 14-year-old in an apartment and make himself breakfast, dress himself, wash his clothes, go to school,

and he just did that. He was a kid acting as an adult, but at night as other kids were going home to their families, he was going home alone to his apartment. I mean, like, there's definitely a lot of loneliness right i mean like basically goes up hard to sleep at night so i'd go like on these long night walks it's like um thinking about um the future really right i just call them the future walks right and just being like well what are the things that you want to do? Or like the thought that I would always have would just be, I'm like, well, can't get any worse. I'm like,

this is where you're at now. And it can only go up, right? And it does go up. Within a few months, he moves in with his best friend's family. And, you know, he finishes high school, goes to college in Minnesota, then he moves to the Bay Area, becomes a bartender. And a few years after that, he decides to go it on his own. And he looks across the Bay where rents are cheaper, and he finds this old Hawaiian barbecue joint with orange carpets, and he turns it into the hatch. And very quickly, Poncho found success. And when you say success, what do you mean?

They were busy from the outset, essentially. He said that, you know, in his first months, he was serving drinks and red solo cups, and he was sleeping upstairs on a couch, but the place was pretty packed. So fast forward to this past spring, the hatch is employing 17 people, and then the shutdown happens. And Poncho has to lay most of them off. And those employees are waiting to see if Poncho can keep the bar alive, survive the shutdown, and ultimately bring them back. And what do you know about these people who were let go? So essentially at the Hatch, like most bars, there is a front of the house and a back of the house. And the front of the house are the bartenders who were musicians and artists and photographers. And, you know, they're mostly in their 20s and 30s and they're trying to make rent and, you know, some spending money to go out with their friends.

And then there was the back of the house. rent and, you know, some spending money to go out with their friends. And then there was the back of the house. And these are people in their 50s who are trying to survive and trying to support children. So I wanted to know what this shutdown would be like for people on both sides. And so in early April, with the help of a translator, I started talking to Maria. Okay. Estamos aquí. Please. Okay. Hola, María. Hola. She's someone I had never seen before at the Hatch because she would come in at the crack of dawn

to, you know, scrub the floors and clean the tables where my friends and I drink. And what did you learn about her? I was happy in my town. My father loved me a lot. We were a very close family. Maria is 55 years old, and she is from the Mexican state of Michoacán.

And they brought me to know her. She was single. And in the late 1990s, her husband crosses into the United States without documents. And pretty quickly, she follows. So her and her husband and Maria's young stepdaughter all kind of start this new life in America. And, you know, working on fake documents that cost about 20 bucks. Her husband is washing dishes and cooking in smoky kitchens across the East Bay here in the Bay Area. Maria's collecting cans to get by.

And, you know, together they have two more kids. So fast forward to a few years ago, the kids are grown, and she gets a job at the hatch as a cleaner. And she makes about $400 a week. So what does she do after Pancho has to make these layoffs? Well, after the shutdown, her entire family is out of work. So her stepdaughter loses her job at a Toyota dealership. Her son is no longer working in construction. Her husband is out of work. And her daughter,

who is in her senior year at high school, is taking classes from home. And really, this looks like what a lot of American families were going through. But the difference here is that because Maria and her husband are undocumented, there's no $1,200 stimulus check coming her way. There's no additional unemployment insurance coming her way. California has made $500

per undocumented immigrant available. Well, right now, the truth is, I don't need to get involved in this. immigrant available? But she's too afraid to apply for it because she figures it's going to put her on a list.

So how is she getting by? So they're going to a food bank. They're eating more simple meals. Okay. And Maria suffers from intense back pain and she even has to stop

going to physical therapy to deal with that. But her biggest worry is her rent that she owes in just a few weeks and she doesn't want to get kicked out

of her apartment. So she's not sure what she's going to do? So she was saying that she had in just a few weeks, and she doesn't want to get kicked out of her apartment. So she's not sure what she's going to do? So she was saying that she had a little savings that she was keeping for her daughter's graduation. She was going to graduate this year, and she had $800 for the graduation. Really, the only savings at this point that she has is this $800 that she's been saving as a graduation

gift for her daughter. She doesn't want to spend it, but she says she has no choice. Can you ask her how she's feeling? Yeah, okay. Maria, what is it that you're most worried about now with all this situation? And what are you feeling now? ¿Qué es lo que más te preocupa ahora con toda esta situación y qué es lo que estás sintiendo ahora? Pues mucha tristeza. Y económicamente es lo que más me preocupa, la renta. Porque como esto es una casa particular, no creo que el dueño vaya a decir, perdono la renta. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so she's feeling a lot of sadness, and she's very worried mainly because of the economic issue. Very worried. I understand. Maria tells me that she's just desperate to get back to the hatch. She's much less worried about getting sick from the coronavirus than she is about making money and paying her rent. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, bye. So Jack, who is the other person from the bar that you followed? So the other person is Abel Olson. He's a 34-year-old bartender, and he's exactly the kind of guy you'd expect to be tending bar at a place like The Hatch. He's got a bushy mustache. He wears vintage t-shirts. He has lots of tattoos he can't explain. vintage t-shirts. He has lots of tattoos he can't explain. Abel started working at the Hatch last fall. He got along with the staff, loved the customers. He was doing DJ nights upstairs.

Hey there, Jack. How's it going, bud? Good, Abel. How are you? Oh, good, man. Just, you know, killing time at home, playing a little video game, trying not to go outside. So it turns out that the shutdown came at a really bad time for Abel. He just went on a big grocery run. He, you know, just paid off an overdue $270 phone bill. And essentially he tells me he's got about $20 in his pocket. I live, you know, check to check.

I live tip to tip as a bartender. I live, you know, check to check. I live tip to tip as a bartender. So when, you know, I have $20 in my pocket, that is, you know, could be kind of a scary thing, but it's a temporary thing. So now he's hunkered down and quarantined with his girlfriend, who's out of work as a bud tender at a weed dispensary in San Francisco. Honestly, we're not spending a dime. You know, I like we both kind of cancel all of our subscription services. And besides paying bills and food, we're, you know, spending zero dollars. But these are circumstances that are somewhat familiar to Abel. He spent much of his childhood in Portland with a single mom who was sometimes out of work. And he also lost his job as a bartender before when he was in his 20s and kind of was familiar with the unemployment process. And I remember the system being, you know, very obnoxious. So and I was, you know, fully prepared for that kind of bureaucracy again. So the day after the lockdown began,

he immediately applied for funds. He applied for government assistance. He applied for this bartender fund. He basically fanned out and looked for every source of money that he could get. The biggest problem right now is, you know, just waiting for these things to come through and, you know, going food shopping and

trying to kill boredom. And that's kind of about it. Okay. All right. All right. Stay healthy, man. You too. Thanks. So as of early April, Abel is waiting to see if he's going to get government assistance. He's applied for it. Maria is not eligible for any of that assistance and afraid to seek the benefits she could get from California. And so she's running out of money. Absolutely. Hey, Poncho. Hey, there you are.

How's it going, man? So as I was talking to Abel and Maria in April, I also reached out to Poncho to see how takeout was going. Well, you know, I started the takeout delivery service, which was building it from scratch, right? When you did, you said you did deliveries yesterday or today? Yesterday. Yeah, I did deliveries yesterday.

And how many did you actually do? I did one delivery. Yeah. So takeout is not going well. In the first week, the hatch had nine orders and I was one of them. Wow. So that brought in $369 in the first week and that obviously wasn't going to be enough to help the business survive. And on top of that, he had multiple other complications. Yelp blocked all our ads.

So that was a bit of a setback for sure. The fact that he got locked out of the Hatch's Yelp account because of an overdue advertising bill. Wait, so they blocked all your ads? Can you clarify that? What do you mean? It says that we have to pay for the bill that we need to pay. So, you know, the number one platform that people use, we can't advertise that we're open, we're doing deliveries and takeout on it

because they've locked us out. And why is that important? It was important because without Yelp, in some ways, it was very difficult for them to tell their customers that they were even doing takeout now. Instead, I would watch The Hatch's Instagram account post these increasingly desperate pitches to get people to come in. One of the Instagram posts I remember is just Robin

waiting bored by the phone being like, please call me. But people weren't. No, obviously not. I mean, it was a really difficult start for the takeout business. And meanwhile, he was on the hook for more than $8,000 in rent that was upcoming. He had two cooks and his manager on salary, and he had no money coming in. Mm-hmm. And at this point, what are his options? So around that time, Congress had approved a $349 billion package of small business loans for people just like Poncho. Right, PPP. Exactly. So these are essentially forgivable small business loans that are designed to help small business owners just like Poncho, who are in this situation, to get a lifeline and keep their businesses alive and keep paying their employees. So immediately, I said, well, I'm going to jump on this because I suspected

everyone had jumped on it. Immediately, Poncho applies for one of these loans through Chase Bank. So I put in the information and they're like, great, good job. They go, we'll send you a confirmation email. Email never showed up. And it's just completely a Kafkaesque experience. Pancho understood that he was competing against literally hundreds of thousands of other small business owners to get this money. Then we were like in panic mode. And I was like, oh shit, we need to reapply now, right?

Especially at that point, I'm like, oh, we are in so much trouble. So reapplied. And then Chase was like, sorry, you're not eligible at this time to get a loan. You know, so I'm like, okay, this is the worst. Wow. What a mess. What a mess. What a mess. Yeah.

And how would you describe his state of mind in this moment? Because this is a pretty grim situation. It was. This is a real crossroads for the Hatch and for Poncho. And I know that Poncho is disappointed that he didn't get the money. Yet when I'm talking to him, he still has this kind of dark humor about the situation. I appreciate that you've got like kind of gallows humor. You know, I love that you can laugh about it.

Well, it's one of those things where I can't really afford to be down in the dumps about it. I think I have to be proactive because literally people are depending on it, right? But so as long as there's things for me to try, I have to keep going. All right, man. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. All right. Talk soon. Bye-bye. It is Friday. It's May 1st and May Day, Pam.

Yes. The Bay Area shelter-in-place order extended through the end of this month. Here in the Bay Area, we are still a ways out from restaurants reopening. This hits Oakland especially hard. A lot of folks across the country here in California and in Oakland dealing with the new unemployment numbers that came out. Again, just dismal numbers. One in five workers without a job in California. Many Bay Area renters are in a similar position. I hope that's true.

Like, I don't think we're really planning on staying here for super long. How long have you guys been here? Since October. I started, I got this apartment and the job at Hatch on the same day. In the beginning of May, I ride my bike over to Abel's apartment. And he lives by the highway, kind of on the edge of West Oakland. And he is in the backyard fixing up his lowrider bike, and we start chatting about how the past few weeks have been.

Have you been talking to many other people at the Hatch recently? Yeah, I talked to Poncho and Lincoln. And how is Abel doing? He's actually doing pretty well. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I don't know if it checks pretty great. You know, and some interesting things

have come out of that, actually. He's been getting unemployment now for three weeks and through this

combination of state unemployment assistance and this new federal money from the stimulus law, he's making more than $1,000 a week

and that's double what he made at the hatch. And he said it's more than he's ever made in his life. Still more than what you've been making. Yeah. Okay. Definitely. What have you done with the money? So my computer actually died.

Okay. The screen cracked in half, so I bought a new laptop. Nice. Okay. Yeah. How much was that, the laptop? It was like $900. Okay. Cool.

But that'll, you know, that's... Yeah, not anything crazy. It's just like kind of something that works good. Sure. Paid rent? Paid rent, yeah, just paid rent, just all the bills. And food. So rent, food, bills, and then that.

Yeah. And so what did he tell you about his life during this period? I mean, he told me he was surprised that the government worked as intended here. He was very skeptical at the beginning. But now, you know, the money was coming in, and he was actually starting to pay off a bit of debt. And is your girlfriend still not working? uh she's still not working okay she yeah so it's actually been surprisingly it's been pretty good um good uh it's nice to yeah

we we didn't have we've never had a day off together. Okay. So now we're like, you know, getting our fill of that. That's good. Yeah, it's good, man. Good, good, good, good. Yeah. Do you feel like at certain points you try to look for a job or are you just going to try to ride it out or? I mean, I'm going to just ride it out for now. Especially given the fact you're getting the money, right?

Yeah. The extra money goes through July. Yeah. So for Abel, the safety net is very much working. It is working as intended. And Abel now has the luxury

of being able to stay at home. And he's concerned about the virus, so he's not super motivated to get back to work. So I'm walking through downtown Oakland and heading over to the hatch right now. It's the first time I've actually been here. So I go to see Poncho at the hatch,

and at this point, business really has not picked up. He's making roughly 5% of what he made before the pandemic. He has burned through roughly $20,000 in emergency funds he had set aside and another $20,000 of his own personal money. And he has new problems. A few days earlier, someone had broken into the window above the door, climbed in, and robbed the hatch. Yeah, so they came in, like laptops, cameras, napkins, yeah, liquor.

This guy cannot catch a break. He really couldn't. So how much total shit did they steal? I think we have it currently that we can keep track of, about maybe $13,000. Although it turned out that despite the entire mess with the loan process, he ended up getting one of these PPP loans from the government. Yeah. So what happened with that?

We got the money. Okay, that's good. And it's a nightmare. Okay. But he said it turned out to be a nightmare itself, and it was putting him in a bind. $72,500? Something like that.

Why is it a nightmare? It is a nightmare because we, like, basically I now have, what am I, seven weeks left or something like that? So these small business loans, they come with specific rules. And specifically, Pancho has to spend 75% of the money on payroll within several weeks. Problem was, he was running a takeout joint now. He didn't need 75% of his staff.

Take Maria. Pancho doesn't have the need for a cleaner like he did before the pandemic. And even if he was able to bring Maria back, she's undocumented, so her wages wouldn't count against the payroll money he has to spend. And then there are people like Abel. He's making more money on unemployment than he did at the Hatch, so he has no incentive to come in and get a paycheck. I called this guy that used to work here before, and I was like,

listen, I was like, what are you doing right now before and i was like listen i was like what are you doing right now right i was like you should come like just like do some same clock hands a couple things like that he's like he's like i'm gonna pay you really well because i gotta move this money anyway and he's like, so, eh. He's like, I don't really want to come to work. So I can't even get anybody to take this money. So then I'm talking to the accountant and he's like, you're in the same boat as a lot of other people. So suddenly he's sitting on top of all this money and he can't use it the way he probably most needs to, which is to pay the rent.

Exactly. And this was a common criticism of PPP from small business owners. You had to use this money towards bringing people back to work and fast. But in reality, you don't need this many employees to come back to work when your business is so slow. And on top of that, many of your employees would prefer to stay home and continue to collect unemployment. But as I was talking to Pancho about this in the bar, I get an alert on my phone said San Francisco was setting some dates for outdoor dining and eventually even indoor dining for the first time since the lockdown began. I'll tell you right here. So I think it's June 13th is for restaurants, outdoor restaurants.

July 13th is like indoor restaurants. That's crazy. Outdoor restaurants is June 15th? Yeah. And it hits Poncho that, you know, Oakland probably will follow suit soon. Right. And if so, that means he just has to survive maybe just a few more months before he can get back to normal. That's encouraging. That's interesting. Good.

We'll be right back. cock. The Bay Area is taking another big step into reopening today. That means outdoor dining gets the green light to reopen officially. Restaurants say reopening outdoor dining is a relief. This has been kind of a confusing process for a lot of people involved, Christian. Yeah, very confusing process for a lot of people and a lot of businesses following this very closely, as you said. So, Jack, by the summer, bars and restaurants were allowed to open for outside dining in Oakland, just as in San Francisco. So what did that look like for The Hatch? So on July 28th, The H hatch did reopen for outdoor dining. So they set up a few tables out on the sidewalk, and they built a little takeout window into the kitchen.

And, you know, they were starting this new model and hoping that it worked. And what did that new model mean for the three people you have been following? So for Maria, she probably was most eagerly awaiting the hatch to reopen of any of the people I had been following. But one day when I called her cell phone, her husband picked up and he was sounding panicked and actually told me that he was wheeling her to the emergency room because her back pain had gotten so bad. Wow. Okay. Hola, Kirla. Okay. Hola, Maria. ¿Cómo estás?

Pues, ay, un poquito enfermo. When I called back a few days later, I found out some terrible news. Sí, pues, al final de cuentas me dejaron cáncer. Ay. The Maria had been diagnosed with cancer in her hip. Hmm. So all that pain she had been diagnosed with cancer in her hip. Hmm. So all that pain she had been experiencing was probably from that, from the cancer.

Right, and now, you know, she essentially couldn't walk. Fortunately, she does have some health insurance through a county program that provides health insurance to undocumented immigrants for a small fee. She is getting some treatment, but it is still in the early stages and it's not exactly clear how everything will turn out. But of course, she's in no shape to get back to cleaning the hatch. So before, Maria really hadn't wanted to apply for this $500 benefit that California made available to undocumented residents. But now her situation had grown so desperate that she was willing to take the risk and try to get that money. Has she actually gotten through or to the line to figure that out? She didn't. She called 90 times. 90. 90. Wow. Yeah. 90 something times. And they never got

through that. It's so hard and they just can't get it through. Pancho, however, did need a cleaner. And so he decided to give her husband some hours. The only problem with that was Maria joked that her husband wasn't a great cleaner, and Pancho confirmed that. But it sounds like the decision to hire her husband wasn't really about whether or not he was a great cleaner. It was about keeping the family financially, I guess, on their feet. Right. He was trying to help Maria and her family in this moment. Okay.

Que tenga un buen día. Muchas gracias, Maria. Que tengas un buen día. Y cuídate mucho, por favor. Que Dios te bendiga. Cuídate. Cuídate a ti también. Gracias, Maria.

Gracias. Adiós. Okay, adiós. And what about Abel? Eric, how's it going, bud? Hey, man, how are you? So I called him up, and he told me he was back at work. So, first day, you know, when the staff all came back together, what was the mood like?

Oh, man, I think we were just really happy to see each other after, you know, I don't know, four months or whatever. You know, had a round of shots, and then put our masks back on and got back to work. You know, it was positive. You know, I think we all really liked working there. But the bad news was that, like Maria, a health crisis had also emerged in Abel's life. So mom is diagnosed with cancer, and so she's going through chemo right now.

Oh, Jesus. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um... What kind of cancer? Colon cancer. Okay. It's definitely survivable, but there's definitely a reality that, that you know my mom could die from this

so um uh it it um it's it's funny about this that you know it's like you uh how to put it uh it's like life still goes on in in the pandemic you know it's like you kind of expect like because there's this thing going on you know it's like that nothing else kind of like will fall apart to you and you're like well oh shit well this too right his mother lives in another state so he was concerned about his ability to go visit her by going back to work. But he was also at the same time grateful to have his job at the Hatch as a distraction from everything that was going on. And what about the unemployment benefits that Abel had, which seemed like they were more than he was making at the hatch. Did that affect his decision? It did. The extra federal benefits that were showing up in his unemployment checks

were set to expire at the end of July. So Abel felt he had to get back to work in order to pay rent. What are you making in a shift right now? I think it's like a hundred bucks, basically like a shift before taxes. So it comes out to like, like eight, 80 something. Um, and then, you know, tips can vary dramatically, but it's probably $30 or less. He only had a few shifts a week now. And before the pandemic, he was making roughly $500 a week. And now it was a bit over $200 a

week. Wow. You know, all I can kind of do right now, you know, is just try to stay positive as much as I can. Yeah, man. Well, good luck with, you i keep the rest of the podcast then and uh yeah you need to know anything else thank you feel free to give me a call yeah thanks man bye all right appreciate it Hey, Poncho. Jack. Hey. How are you? Pretty good.

Good. Just hanging out at home. So I got in touch with Poncho a few days after the reopening. Yeah, it was good seeing them, especially like after months, you know. So there's the part where I was like, yes, I'm glad everybody's here. But I did have this moment when all the staff came in. And I was like, I wonder if this is just a fool's errand. You know, I was like, I wonder if this is what we're doing here. Right. I was like, and maybe all we're having is this moment where we're like we get to see each other and we get like two more months of this before everything completely implodes, you know.

more months of this before everything completely implodes, you know? So now, you know, it seems everything's falling into place. And yet, Pancho has a lot of doubts about everything. You know, first of all, he's worried that there's going to be a second wave and a second shutdown. And then he's also really worried because Oakland was changing rapidly in front of his eyes. I mean, the unemployment was high in the city and he was just seeing, you know, on a weekly basis, his friends and his customers leaving the Bay Area. And then he was worried that the people who were left behind in Oakland

wouldn't be enough to make his business survive. For me personally, the best way to describe it is I was in the hatch and my friend stopped by and she was like, you look old. She's like, you look so old. I was like, yeah, I was like, I feel old. I was like, yeah, I was like, that is a correct assessment of that. You know, and she's like, yeah, she was usually just like so super cheery all the time. And I was like, it's kind of hard to be cheery because it's like everywhere you look, there's some sort of fire and there's just like so many unknowns. Like it's just hard to predict anything, you know? And you're constantly second guessing if you're making the right decision in any given moment. It's almost like a war of attrition, where you're trying to see who can hold on the longest, right?

And get to the other side. And then you're like, am I doing a good enough job with that? And am I even the right person to be doing that? Being in this situation, you feel helpless, right? Where you're like, and am I even the right person to be doing that? You know, being in this situation, like you feel helpless, right? Where you're like, I was like, man, I was like, I'm really good at this, but I'm only so good. So Jack, it has now been six months

since you started following Poncho and the staff of The Hatch. Ultimately, what did this experience tell you about what it takes to keep a small business alive right now? And I think it's pretty clear at this point that that isn't going to happen anytime soon. And so that means that a place like the Hatch is left teetering on the edge. These are people who can't work from home. These are hourly workers who don't have many, if any, savings. And so it's going to remain an important question of what happens to these people over the next months and even years. And I think it's important to remember that, you know, this is the story of my neighborhood bar, but it's also the story of your neighborhood bar, this is the story of my neighborhood bar, but it's also the story of your neighborhood bar. This is the story of everyone's favorite bar or restaurant.

And remember that before the pandemic, the Hatch was successful. I mean, this was a place that was, you know, pretty full just about every night of the week. And now Poncho is scraping to survive, you know, for the sake of the H hatch and for the sake of his employees. And yet he's finding that there's really only so much he can do. Jack, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you. So I'm walking down 15th Street. It is Labor Day weekend in Oakland. And we're just coming up to the hatch.

How you doing? I have learned to have no expectations in 2020. How you doing? I have learned to have no expectations in 2020. Like, how could you predict there's going to be wildfires, you know? With the wild, I mean, we had to shut down again yesterday. Okay. Two days ago. Why?

Because of the smoke, the air quality. Okay. Yeah, it was in the red. So anytime it hits orange, we just end up just shutting down. So that means, like, you've now got a business that is required to be outside, and you can't be outside, essentially. Yep, pretty much. You can't be inside because of a deadly virus,

and then you can't be outside because of deadly smoking. Yeah. We'll be right back. Hello? Hey, Poncho, it's Jack. Hey, Jack, how's it going? Good. How are you? Just in the office, just doing some work, you know, catching up. Nice. Are you in the office at the Hatch?

Yeah, just hanging out here. Following a major spike in infections and hospitalizations, much of California, including Oakland, has gone into a second lockdown. A few days ago, Jack called Poncho back to see how both he and the Hatch are doing. You know, it's the second shutdown and obviously the holiday season. It's just, you know, it's a lot for sure. I think I gave myself 72 hours of a pity party.

And then I was just like, OK, you got to get back to work. You just got to get back to work. I was like, you just got to get back to work. So I just got back on my phone, started calling up distributors that I know, just seeing what kind of deals they possibly have. Called up a bunch of other lenders that I know, just to see what's going on. Because nobody knows how this new stimulus package is going to look like when it, when it rolls out. Like, are they getting ready to receive money before I'm going to be able to get

more money or to go into somebody else, you know, or is there even anybody else to go to? Right. Is there even anybody left out there for you to go to? So I've just been calling around and obviously talking to, uh, the landlord and uh working stuff out with him you know like he called and he's like hey can i get rent and i was like

mr kim you know you can't get rent and he just started laughing he's like yeah yeah no i just i thought i'd try like come on man yeah so yeah you know hopefully like that relationship is strong enough to last to help a lot longer this goes to hopefully like you know he sticks it out with us and just uh gives us a bit of a break while things recalibrate you know so and just to just to clarify i mean how how are you making ends meet right now is it basically taking on debt oh yeah we're just taking on debt right now it's like in the beginning of the year we were gushing blood and we're like okay great you know like uh these stitches and band-aids are working i think we're beginning to heal and then pull back the band-aid and the stitches and i was like okay we're back here again i was like we are back here again oh man what what have you seen among a lot of your peers in

oakland um because obviously we've been talking to you and hatch as sort of a an example an illustration of the larger industry what's what's happening across oakland in the restaurant and bar industry? Oh, it is, um, brutal. That would be the, like, uh, the kindest word I could possibly use. It's just, um, it's bad. You know, like there's like, I was in San Francisco the other day, just kind of walking around. I couldn't believe it was like a Wednesday and it was just a ghost town. And I was like, I can't do in downtown San Francisco. I was like a ghost town and i was like i can't do in downtown san francisco i was like it's like a ghost town i was like uh you know and uh there's

a bunch of restaurants that were so prominent and they're not working they can't work you know they're shut down and he knows that they'll ever open up you know so it's just not really feasible for any restaurants to survive unless you have strong, you know, I believe the ones that have strong relationships with their landlords and the landlords are either outright owned their properties and are willing to work some sort of deal with their tenants. That's the only way it'll survive. Yeah. I mean, it's brutal. It's brutal out there. I mean, how much you've kind of touched on this, but I just really want to get your direct answer on this. I mean, how much longer do've kind of touched on this, but I just really want to get your direct answer on this.

I mean, how much longer do you think the hatch can survive? So I would say we would probably be able to last maybe a month, two months, maybe. And that's like an extremely optimistic two months. It's an extremely optimistic two months. It's an extremely optimistic two months, but you know, who knows? Who really knows what's going to happen? But hopefully all the things that we're planning, we can actually get to enjoy them next year

and look back on this and just say, man, we survived the craziest year ever in this industry and laugh about it. All right. Thank you, my friend. I appreciate it. All right. Thank you.

All right. Stay safe. Be well. Bye-bye. The hatch's bartender, Abel, had been working there until the most recent shutdown. He still hopes to return if the bar reopens. Maria, who cleaned the hatch, has been undergoing chemotherapy and has not been working. But she says that her health has been slowly improving.

California said it will lift its lockdown when its hospitals have more than 15% capacity in their intensive care units. in their intensive care units. Today's episode was produced by Daniel Guimet and Luke Vanderplug, with help from Michael Simon-Johnson and Alexandra Lee Young. It was edited by Lisa Chow and Lisa Tobin, and engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.