A Restaurant surviving The Pandemic In Antigua Guatemala
OR
ONE WITHOUT, TWO WITH…
15th. of March 2020, we were celebrating our very first anniversary when our dear Prez came on national TV to tell the country we were shutting everything down.
Everything!
Many of us thought it was going to be a matter of a week or two and then everything would be back to normal. “They” would never allow the whole world to shut down for more than that…right? We laugh about it now but for any single business in the service industry to still be open today is a minor miracle. In the beginning, the uncertainty was palpable and terrifying. No savings, still carrying debt, still growing pains, not fully established, living day to day. It was Semana Santa season and the sun was out but it was pretty much the only thing that came out. That and street dogs. Saturday afternoon in Semana Santa and not one soul in the street. Maybe a delivery motorbike and the end of the street every now and then. It was a scene from a bizarre sci-fi movie.
At Fermento, we just pretended we were not done even though there were no customers. There was still gas in the tank and food in the fridge. My position was that nobody from my staff was being let go and that we would survive this together, which we did. My job was mainly to be here to prop my staff up, cheer them up and give them some hope, even when I myself wasn’t certain if tomorrow we were going to be able to serve a burger again. Debt was piling up. We would be having lunch at the bar facing the street and we would see another pickup truck full of restaurant equipment on its way out, and all of us in silence were wondering when it was going to be our turn to pack everything. At least there was always a plate of warm food for us every day. We kept going with what we had and got creative in whatever ways we could. I guess that was part of the minor miracle to be here today. Some people didn’t like those creative ways but we had to do what we had to do to survive.
C’ est la vie.
The Pandemic brought out the best and the worst in people. Some relationships were unfortunately lost. I guess the Pandemic accelerated what was going to happen eventually. Fortunately, other friendships were reinforced too. That was the other part of the minor miracle. There are a few names that quickly come to mind that I know without them and their divine intervention Fermento would not be open today. And those Angles keep showing up. We must be doing something right.
Things have somewhat returned to something similar to how it was before and it’s a breath of fresh air. The uncertainty is no longer there.
To all of my fellow restaurant and bar owners who are still here, I salute you.
If I survived one year without a pandemic and two with… we will all make it!
Written by Hector Castro.
Owner and chef of Fermento
