SACRAMENTO, Calif. — "We are directing that all bars, nightclubs, brew pubs and the like be closed in the state of California."
This was Gov. Newsom's message on March 15, 2020. And a year later, these businesses are still under strict regulations due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Aziz Bellarbi Salah is the general manager and proprietor of several restaurants and bars throughout Sacramento, including midtown's Aioli, The Grand and downtown's Brasserie Capitale.
When Newsom's announcement first came out, rather than close up shop, Bellarbi Salah quickly pivoted and transformed one of his businesses into a bodega, selling wine, produce, as well as take-out orders in hopes of keeping the doors open and staff employed. He even retained and sold rolls of toilet paper from his supplier, an item in high demand at the start of the pandemic which became obvious as he had to limit an allotment of two-rolls customer.
"I closed all my restaurants except Aioli. Within one period overnight, I transformed Aioli into a market," Bellarbi Salah said. "It was like... this is what we're resorting to, toilet paper!"
To Bellarbi Salah, getting creative meant the difference between the life or death of his restaurants.
"The advice is don't kill yourself over the business, but if the business is an extension of yourself, survival of that place and that feeling and that community was really important to me," Bellarbi Salah said.
But the stress of what turned into a year of "restaurant whiplash" a term deemed by Bellarbi Salah and other business owners of constantly conforming to new regulations as well as opening and closing their doors, wreaked havoc.
In the attempt to keep his businesses alive, Bellarbi Salah nearly killed himself.
"I definitely had some scary points there and I'm grateful to be alive," Bellarbi Salah said. "There were times when I had worked seven days a week for two and a half months straight. I fluctuated weight wildly. I had a bad panic attack that showed proof in the protein as a mild heart attack. I feel like I've aged 10 years in one year."
The restaurant business is more than work to Bellarbi Salah, it runs in his blood. With his parents opening around five businesses together, he essentially grew up in restaurants, where he attained an expertise for wine, and opened a wine bar at the age of 21.
"My father probably has over 40 years restaurant experience at this point, and [this pandemic] is like nothing any of us have ever seen," Bellarbi Salah said.
He compared this past year to wartime, but without the bombs.
"It was like a silent war and as a restaurateur, I definitely believe if we were in a warzone, some of us would still be operating," said Bellarbi Salah. "If you think back to any warzone that's ever happened, World War II, the cafes were still serving... I think back on [this year] where there was a huge amount of despair and the comfort that food can provide is just as important as an embrace of a good friend."
And to Bellarbi Salah, the staff that creates and serves that food is a part of his family. That's why having to furlough around 40 employees not just once, but twice was what he called "emotionally devastating," especially during the second COVID-19 wave where restaurants were re-shut down.
Having to adapt to survive is something we've seen businesses across California do during the pandemic.
As an economist, Sacramento State University Professor Katherine Chalmers has watched the changes the pandemic created with an expert eye. To her, the businesses she's seen the most impacted over the past year are ones like Bellarbi Salah's: restaurants, bars, as well as hair and beauty salons.
When ABC10 spoke with Chalmers in April 2020 for our feature "A pandemic like (n)one before," that dug deep into our past pandemics, she said while many compare this time to the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, economic-wise, it was more similar to the Great Depression.
As our current pandemic unfolded over the last year, her comparison of the two economic-wise has also mildly transformed.
"There are certain parallels to the Great Depression," Chalmers said. "But there are some pretty significant differences as well."
Chalmers said one of the positive differences she's found between the Great Depression is how well our stock market is doing.
"A distinction [between the Great Depression and now is] what we call the 'real economy' and 'money economy' in economics. The stock market is going gangbusters... part of the reason for that is because we have such a steeply progressive personal income tax and the richest Californians aren't earning their money by performing labor, they're earning their money through the stock market," said Chalmers. "In the Great Depression, that wasn't the case at all. It was characterized by the stock market crash."
Another difficult time for our economy was the recession of 2008-09. It's something Chalmers said we can learn from in regards to our recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
"The recovery from [the 2008/2009] recession has been exceedingly slow," said Chalmers. "We were really just starting to see gains in terms of wages in 2018 and 2019 before the pandemic hit and that sort of pulled the rug out from everybody."
She believes our economy will, "hopefully," have a quick turn around as more and more get vaccinated and are comfortable returning to work and normalcy, but a full recovery might not be immediate.
"It's not one of those things where suddenly you flip a light switch and everything is back to normal," Chalmers said. "I think it's going to take awhile for that to happen."
Depending on how certain industries recuperate from the coronavirus pandemic, that recovery could play a bigger role creating change and impacting people's lines of work. It's what she calls "structural unemployment."
"As certain industries recover better and stronger than they were before and other industries don't, then the workers in those industries that aren't recovering as fast are going to need to re-train or find jobs in other sectors that are booming," Chalmers said. "[It could] take up to two years for California to really get back to pre-pandemic levels."
But she hopes that with time, change will come, something we've seen in our history.
"Moments of social and economic turmoil and upheaval are really nice opportunities for change," Chalmers said. "What we saw coming out of the Great Depression was improvements in our social welfare programs, improvements in worker safety, investments in our nation's infrastructure."
As for Bellarbi Salah, what he hopes will come next is also linked to history... a celebration of life and perseverance.
"We need to have our roaring twenties. We need to celebrate that we've gotten through this. We need to come back together, when we're able to in a safe manner," Bellarbi Salah said. "We need to all give each other a big hug and a glass of champagne."
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