Cruise ships return to Seattle, but do they bring returns to downtown restaurants?

“So many of our local businesses – who have had 16 busy months behind them – rely on the cruise season and the visitors it brings to make sure they can survive and thrive.” Steve Metruck, Executive Director, Port of Seattle , noted in his comments that the industry is responsible for creating 5,500 jobs and “bringing nearly $ 900 million to our region”.

But for downtown restaurants, the celebration is wary. Job creation is less of a problem than finding manpower to fill the existing ones, and the arrival of cruise tourists presents a new challenge in a year full of them. Accommodation of visitors means restaurants adapt at a time must, in which everyone is scarce and surprised by the speed of the return of tourism. “It was like someone flipped a switch,” said Ben Skinner, the manager of Salumi Deli. “People are here, people with luggage.”

Brent Berkowitz, vice president of food and beverage at Palisociety, said, “Cruise lines are a great sign that life is returning to what we thought was normal before Covid.” But it doesn’t exactly mean a sigh of relief for Hart and the Hunter, the restaurant in the company’s downtown hotel. Increasing tourism helps them to bridge the gap created by lost revenue more quickly, so that the incoming crowds are welcome. But it forces the restaurant to walk a fine line to meet the needs of tourists without leaving the local community that kept it afloat. “The balancing act is not to be too distant or intimidating in the formulation or the food on the menu,” says Berkowitz, while still giving her chefs creative freedom to address the residents of Seattle and support local producers.

“We’re a different deli than we were before Covid,” says Skinner. Since reopening last summer, Salumi’s customer demographics have shifted younger and more feminine, with their bestsellers going from salami, porchetta and meatballs to a Cubano, Chicago and a turkey club. (Don’t worry, he promises, there’s nothing left from the menu.) To do business, they had to keep trying new things. Eventually they showed up with a bigger menu and an emphasis on service that was put to the test as the crowds dwindled. Now, he says, they’re basically back to pre-pandemic levels.

“It’s exciting,” says Skinner, and he loves the energy. But also new territory for them when they find out what to expect next. “Nobody knows what’s going to happen, but we’re so ready.”

Quinton Stewart, the head chef at Ben Paris, was less ready when the State Hotel moved from barely a floor to nightly capacity. From the restaurant he could see people waiting for their rooms in the lobby – some were being cleaned by the hotel manager because customers were returning faster than the staff.

Staff shortages mean they serve a scaled-down version of the menu and still not open for lunch – all of their staff work five nights a week that they are open for dinner, and double on the weekend when they offer brunch. “We never have a slow brunch, we never had a bad Thursday,” says Stewart. They like to think of themselves as a local place but called the recent tourist crowds “a strong reminder of our location that we are at 2nd and pike”.

For all of his own efforts to create “the anti-hotel restaurant,” with winking nods and winking nods to the genre’s staples, he says that what they serve from the kitchen has “become half burgers.” “

Stewart suspects that they actually make more money with less meal times as they don’t have to staff the slower meals and they can’t have extra items on the menu. However, it’s part of a bigger puzzle for Stewart who is less than more accommodating to guests. “We are not trained for that,” he says. In order for his team to earn what it deserves by returning en masse travelers from places with little or no tips, he is considering doing something he never wanted to do: automatically tip bills.

“On the one hand, it’s nice to see the ships again,” says Brendan McGill, who is hoping to reopen the Hitchcock Restaurant Group’s three downtown restaurants next month. But after walking through Pioneer Square at midnight and seeing a handful of boats in Elliott Bay, he says, “It feels like one of those dystopian science fictions where the rich float on clouds.”