McNinch House: Staff on call, less dessert prep
The following article appeared in the July 15, 2020, edition of The Charlotte Ledger. Sign up for free to have original business-y news about Charlotte delivered to your inbox:
Beloved Business is an occasional Ledger series checking in with some of the Charlotte area’s best-known local companies.
by David Griffith
Ellen Davis wasn’t initially concerned about the economic hardships the coronavirus was going to bring to the McNinch House fine dining restaurant on North Church Street in uptown. She’d been preparing for a recession for 18 months.
“I had a feeling that this (was) gonna happen,” she said. “But I didn’t know that we were going to have a virus, so that has started chipping away (at) my recession savings.”
Davis purchased the house in 1978 from the McNinch family, who had owned it since the turn of the century. (Former occupant Sam McNinch served as Charlotte mayor from 1905-1907.) She spent a decade restoring it and turning it into a restaurant and historic landmark before opening for business in 1989.
The McNinch House fine dining restaurant opened in 1989 in this 128-year-old Queen Anne-style home named for former Charlotte Mayor Sam McNinch, whose family owned the home for decades. (Courtesy of McNinch House restaurant)
The restaurant, like others across the country, was forced to close in March because of Covid-19. Since opening back up on June 5, it has not yet reached the 50% maximum capacity allotted by the state, but Davis said she is encouraged by the flow of business, particularly on weekends. June’s sales were down 35% from June 2019.
The restaurant was always on the smaller side, with seating for just 40 people during pre-pandemic times. Davis said if they can get numbers up to half-capacity, they’ll be able to weather the financial storm.
Tables were already placed relatively far apart from each other in the restaurant’s multiple dining rooms, Davis said, so what’s keeping diners from coming in may be more likely financial worries than health fears.
The restaurant’s menu specializes in labor-intensive dishes that were often prepared in advance with the expectation that diners would order them at some point during the evening. But as Covid-19 brought smaller, less predicable crowds, the restaurant had to pivot to cooking dishes as they were ordered, particularly desserts. Davis began making desserts to take some pressure off her cooking staff.
With a high emphasis on reservations and more expensive food, Davis has had to strike a balance with schedules so McNinch is not over-staffed or overcrowded at any given time. She put staff on an “on-call” basis, which she said legally allows them to collect unemployment while still working reduced hours. Davis said she is concerned about what will happen when federal stimulus programs expire.
“Everybody’s job depends on everybody’s job,” she said. “It’s more family-like than it is just somebody coming in to work a few months and then going away.”
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