At Showmars, a cautious reopening
The following article appeared in the June 24, 2020, edition of The Charlotte Ledger. Sign up for free to have original business-y news about Charlotte delivered to your inbox:
The CEO of Charlotte-based restaurant chain Showmars says the biggest challenge is “the day-to-day of Covid.” (Photo courtesy of Showmars)
by David Griffith
As the pandemic stretches into the summer, Showmars is doing its best to take things carefully and focus on community service.
The southern/Greek-style restaurant chain, founded in Charlotte in 1982, shut down indoor dining at its 31 locations in North and South Carolina in March when all non-essential businesses closed. Indoor dining accounted for 50% of the company’s business at the time. Showmars still offered delivery and moved registers outdoors to help customers order curbside pickup.
“The biggest challenge (we’ve faced) is the day-to-day of Covid,” said CEO Dean Peroulas. “Which direction are we going?” He has had to monitor updates on the virus “hour-to-hour” to try and adjust Showmars’ business model with the flow of the pandemic. Precautions he expected not to have to take for at least 18 months were forced to be implemented in 18 days.
Now, with North Carolina in Phase 2 of the reopening process, Showmars has the chance to reopen. But it is proceeding cautiously, setting up dining rooms to maintain adequate social distancing and offering ample sanitation options. Some of their locations recently opened, but others, like two in uptown Charlotte, remain closed.
“We kind of dipped our foot in quite slowly, to be honest with you,” Peroulas said.
The two locations in uptown Charlotte pivoted to a grocery-delivery system, which made some local headlines in early April. This helped customers who needed groceries and essentials and allowed the restaurants to continue to offer work and pay to staff.
Showmars also worked with its food supplier, overstocked because of the number of restaurants closing, to take some of the excess food and make meals for hospitals and shelters.
Transitioning to service-oriented work helped the restaurant chain retain 80% of its roughly 800 employees since closing its dining rooms.
“Even when we were on our heels, we feel like we still wanted to be there for our community,” said Peroulas, “because, quite frankly, they’ve been here for us during this whole process.” For years, the company’s advertising slogan has been, “Everybody loves Showmars.”
Unfortunately, with cases in North Carolina rising once again, Peroulas is wary of what the future may hold.
“We were hoping that as well as stage one went into stage two, that stage three would follow much the same way,” he said, “and I believe it is trending in the opposite direction.”
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Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Contributing editor: Tim Whitmire, CXN Advisory; Reporting intern: David Griffith