She saw a marked slowdown during the worst of the heat. She also didn’t feel she could expect folks to wait outside in the heat for their food either. “At the end of our summer, I said to the team, ‘we’re not doing this again,’” she says. After Ogunbanjo passed out at the Juneteenth event, she decided to heed her doctor’s warning. For the rest of the summer, the Lasgidi Cafe truck was largely idle. The chef instead lined up as many private events and group cooking classes as she could. That also meant moving her team to a seasonal schedule and managing summer bookings mostly solo. The challenge, she notes, is that the costs remain, even with her truck garaged and pulling back on staffing, insurance and licenses. Last year, Ogunbanjo took the truck back out in mid-August. It was too early, she says. “Sometimes it’s a bit of a waste when we do go out in this extreme heat because we just don’t see a good turnout,” she says. This summer season, Ogunbanjo is trying to be strategic about when she’ll bring her food truck out, aiming for events after sundown or when there are guaran- tees for a large turnout. “Half of our things we send out are already prepared, so I can’t just put the meats back in the freezer or put the sauce back in the freezer. I’m stuck either trashing that or hoping someone will buy it off of me on Instagram,” she says. “And if you know anything about the cost of food, I can’t afford to throw away a slice of bread.” This year, she’s taken note of restaurant closures and seen more businesses opting for summer breaks. “Everyone’s just having to really take a couple of weeks off, just work out vaca- tions or find new dynamics and ways to keep their doors open, keep the money coming in,” she says. “Summer is brutal in Arizona.” ‘A shock to the system’ at Proof Bread During the summertime slump, Jon Przybyl estimates that Proof Bread, the sourdough bakery he owns with his wife, Amanda Abou-Eid, is in the red about $20,000 each week. “Summer, however you look at it, is a shock to the system,” Przybyl says. “It’s not long enough where you can make sustained changes, because there’s always that old ‘Game of Thrones’ saying, ‘winter is coming.’” Although labor is where many restau- rants and bars cut back, it’s something that Przybyl is unwilling to do. Learning the intricacies and techniques of sourdough baking takes time. Proof spends several months training employees to get them up to speed. And Przybyl doesn’t feel right leaving the people he relies on to be the ones left “holding the bag.” “(That) means that our employees are paying the price,” he says. Going from being busy in the winter to seeing a 50% downward swing during the summer is a “roller coaster ride,” Przybyl says. “By the time you regroup from one summer, the next summer is already here, if you even regroup at all,” he says. Looking for ways to smooth out that ride is all-consuming for Przybyl. The only way through, he and Abou-Eid have deter- mined, is to grow to the point that they can “truly save for the summer.” Heading into the slow season last year, the owners took a $250,000 line of credit “betting on the future.” At the time, Proof had three bakeries, located in north Phoenix, downtown Mesa and Litchfield Park, with a downtown shop planned for the fall. A series of delays prevented the bakers from getting keys to that space in the ECO PHX apartment building until March. The new shop opened in May, missing the high-season window to pay off that short-term debt. Przybyl and Abou-Eid instead rolled it into long-term debt. “For the next seven or eight years,” he says, “we will be paying for last summer.” This year, Proof has been full steam ahead. The bakery is offering more ways to get its bread — extending hours, shipping loaves. To recoup seasonal losses from the Valley farmers markets that take a hiatus or cut hours, Przybyl treks to a Flagstaff market every weekend. The bakery has also started exploring restaurant partner- ships, currently crafting burger buns for Arizona Wilderness Brewing Co.’s July burger of the month. After getting the downtown Phoenix location open, Przybyl and Abou-Eid are turning their attention to their forth- coming outposts in Gilbert and Tempe. The owners are unusually transparent about the grind of running a small busi- ness. In June they highlighted some of their challenges on social media. Their story resonated with fellow business owners and customers. In the week after they shared their story, Przybyl says, that $20,000 deficit was cut in half. “That was people making choices,” Przybyl says. “If we could cut the problem in half, or maybe if even more people made different choices, we could eliminate the problem altogether. That would be my dream, not only for myself, but for many of my colleagues in the food service industry.” ‘Summers are tough’ for In Good Spirits Hospitality In his nearly 30 years working as a chef in the Valley, Bernie Kantak has seen the restaurant scene ebb and flow. Last summer was the slowest he’s seen in about a decade. “Traffic was lighter,” he says. “It just seemed like people were like, ‘alright it’s time to get back out there and see some things.’” Kantak’s prime customers were summering elsewhere, meaning they weren’t at his popular Scottsdale and Phoenix restaurants: Citizen Public House, The Gladly and Beginner’s Luck. His hospitality group’s strategy has been to “save a little money in the bank and kind of hope for the best.” This summer, their plans also included opening Minnow, a sushi and matcha bar in Phoenix’s Arcadia neighborhood. As the In Good Spirits Hospitality group grows, the team adapts. Take food prices. Kantak says they’ll “bite the bullet” on the cost of some dishes but he’s axed others. “Our best-selling entree was scallops for 13 years,” Kantak says, at Citizen and The Gladly. “I actually had to take them off the menu because they’re now 50 bucks a pound.” With less dinner demand in these hot months, Kantak’s restaurant group is also offering a “Christmas in July” gift card bonus – a $25 perk that they normally reserve for the holidays. The hours at his Old Town restaurants, Beginner’s Luck and Citizen Public House, have also tightened. “It’s weird how it works, but when you close on one day, the following day seems to be busier,” he says. The aim for this summer is to “get butts in seats,” Kantak says — and not just at his restaurants. After seeing last year’s slowdown, he went to Local First Arizona and the Arizona Restaurant Association to brain- storm solutions. The result of those conversations was the Devour Summer Chef Series, a five-part dining experience that kicked off in May and runs through September, and Arizona Chefs Week, featuring three-course chef-driven menus at around 20 independent restaurants, which the restaurant association will launch in August. “With some of these other things that we’re trying to do and get(ting) other restaurants involved,” Kantak says, “hope- fully our voices collectively really speak to people out there and let them know that summers are tough.” Boiling Point from p 10 Proof Bread owners Amanda Abou-Eid and Jon Przybyl took out a line of credit to survive last summer. They’ll be paying it back for years. (Sara Crocker) The In Good Spirits Hospitality team opened Minnow in July. (Sara Crocker) A view of the walk-up counter and pastry case at Proof Bread in downtown Phoenix. (Sara Crocker) >> p 14
