Thriving isn’t a word any restaurant owner will use during the pandemic.
There’s been closures, stringent restrictions, and just to get by there’s been adaptation.
Simply staying afloat in times like these could be considered “pandemic thriving.”
Faced with challenge after challenge, restriction after restriction, ever-changing guidelines, the doors at RüT Bar and Kitchen remain open and co-owner Justin Oliveri attributes that to support from the community.
“It’s been an interesting year,” Oliveri said standing in RüT’s entryway Friday morning as the kitchen prepared to-go orders behind him. “We closed down for a month and a half when the first wave came through. Just running take out and delivery had just been a different model that we’re not used to.”
Opened in 2019 and nestled in the corner of the 14th and Lincoln next to Rosauers and right below Beneditos, the little, locally-owned restaurant serving up a plant-based menu hasn’t been able to offer up outdoor dining or open up a giant bay door like other restaurants. They’ve offered exclusively take-out since Governor Inslee shut down indoor dining in November.
Thus far, they’ve been making it work.
“We’ve been fortunate to have people that have stuck by our side and helped us out and given us business when we’ve really needed it,” Oliveri added. “We have a pretty good model that we’ve been running on that we’ve been able to kind of tread that on the line of the black and the red, depending on the month.”
The bringing indoor dining back, even in the limited capacity of 25 percent, offers RüT an opportunity to welcome customers back into their dining room and subsequently some relief for the staff.
“It’ll be somewhere around six tables. Six ‘four-tops’,” Oliveri said while discussing capacity in the small restaurant. “We’re excited for our staff to hopefully get more money in their pockets and a little bit more revenue to help everybody out.”
While some restaurants will take Governor Inslee up on his offer to open up indoor dining on Valentine’s Day, RüT plans to reopen indoor dining sometime next week – likely Wednesday – as Oliveri and his staff meet to make sure they’re up to speed on how to serve diners under current guidelines.
In the meantime, the phone’s still ringing and take-out and delivery tickets are still being lined up in the kitchen and filled thanks to that community support that looks to grow, a few tables at a time, in Phase Two.
“We’ve had an awesome customer support and customer base that has supported us through the entire thing,” Oliveri said. “I think supporting local is probably the best thing people can do. Try to put money in those pockets rather than the big chain restaurants.”
