It has served as a decades-long gathering spot for regulars, local journalists, politicians, and even a few former presidents to rub elbows, drink beer, and watch political debates and election returns, but now the ongoing health crisis threatens to close the 64-year-old Manuel’s Tavern in Poncey-Highland for good.
With business down an average 62 percent and the bar losing around $25,000 per month since April, owner Brian Maloof told Saporta Report Wednesday the “likelihood of closing Manuel’s is significant” and possibly “permanent.” Add limited seating capacity, a dwindling crew of employees, cold weather making outdoor dining less feasible, and $45,000 in insurance and liquor licensing fees coming due, and the situation becomes a powder keg.
A typical December sees Manuel’s generating $310,000 in sales due to the holidays. Maloof says he expects that figure to total just $75,000 this year. Despite the bar’s precarious financial state, Maloof raised the hourly rate for his wait staff to compensate for the dramatic drop in tips and food and drinks sales.
“We’ve gone from 340 chairs inside to 40 chairs outside,” Maloof said in the interview. “We’ve got about 70 percent of our tables blocked off. We normally have 22 bar stools, and we reduced that down to eight.”
After hearing the bar might close, longtime patron Angelo Fuster, along with other regulars, launched a “Save Manuel’s Tavern” campaign via GoFundMe Wednesday to raise $75,000 — the estimated amount needed to pay the liquor license and cover insurance and payroll for the next two months. Maloof shared the link to the campaign in a frank Facebook post Thursday morning.
“We are in financial trouble. For 8 months Manuel’s has taken every course of action known and attempted everything we have been advised to do to save this business,” he writes. “The operational plan put in place in March was to make Manuel’s super COVID safe, cut all costs, expand the to-go business, be open only during our most profitable hours, reduce labor costs, retain employees, and get to the end of the pandemic.”
According to Maloof, property owner Selig Enterprises did adjust the rent on Manuel’s. Maloof also received funding from the Payroll Protection Program (PPP). He used the loan to keep the bar afloat through the summer and fall. That money is now gone.
In trying to keep Manuel’s staff and patrons safe from the virus, Maloof risks the possibility of losing his business; a business his late father founded in 1956, and ran until his death in 2004. It’s an unimaginable choice restaurant and bar owners, like Maloof, should never have been forced to make in the first place.
Like so many small business owners reeling from the financial crisis caused by the pandemic, Maloof counted on another round of stimulus money from Congress. “I was certain additional funding would be available in time. I was wrong,” he says in the Facebook post.
Without this federal relief or city officials postponing or even staggering liquor license renewals for Atlanta’s bars and restaurants, Maloof fears Manuel’s will close by the end of the year.
Bipartisan support for a new stimulus bill that would pump more than $900 billion into the economy finally came earlier this week. However, the majority of the money will be directed to industries other than hospitality. And while it does infuse an additional $300 billion into the PPP and provides rental assistance for families facing eviction, the proposed bill falls short of addressing the needs of the floundering restaurant industry.
When negotiations on the relief bill fell apart earlier this fall, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to pass any bill that didn’t include protections from liability for employers if staff became sick while working during the pandemic.
Now regular citizens, many also struggling financially due to the pandemic, are chipping in $25 and $50 out of their own pockets to help save a small business from closing, essentially doing the job Congress and the Trump administration should have done months ago.
“We were counting on additional small business stimulus coming,” Maloof states in the post. “The need for stimulus has been obvious to everyone in Congress, a new stimulus package has been on the lips of everyone in Congress but as they say “words are cheap”.
Eater reached out to Maloof Thursday morning for comment.
Check out the “Save Manuel’s” GoFundMe page.
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December 03, 2020 at 10:16PM
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Atlanta’s Iconic Manuel’s Tavern Is in Danger of Closing Due to the Pandemic, Owner Brian Maloof Says - Eater Atlanta
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