Crisis Management #47: Comune on weathering the storm and what it needs to see to reopen - Women Of Influence
Description
Comune will reopen for business, but that was never a sure thing.
Co-owner Joe Galati said he met with his accountant in November. The accountant asked him what Galati believed his chances of going bankrupt were.
Galati said 20%.
The accountant said 90%
“That hit the hardest,” Galati said. “There’s a very good chance this is all going away. … That lights a fire. That’s not going to happen. What are we going to do?”
The situation is better today.
Galati explains why he is more optimistic now than he was a few months ago in this episode of Crisis Management, Columbus Business First’s podcast about doing business amid the coronavirus pandemic.
He took a more conservative approach to business in the past year than many peers in the industry. He always expected this to be a long event, not just a few weeks.
Though the entire restaurant industry was challenged, Comune was among the establishments facing added difficulties. It was never built to have a thriving carryout business and the dine-in space was too small to reopen in any meaningful way. It’s still closed today.
But there were bright spots. The Parable Coffee pop-up has done well. There was some success with planned dinner events.
A return to some of the restaurant’s earliest dishes like crispy rice and its walnut-mushroom Bolognese is helping drive sales now.
“You can only hunker down so much,” he said. “At some point a business has to make its numbers.”
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