Pittsburgh's North Shore restaurants endure summer without sports fans

Rico Lunardi opened the third location of Slice on Broadway, his local pizza chain in 2016 at PNC Park. He guesses he missed only five or six Pirates game nights since he opened the spot with a street entrance on Federal Street. “I will never be a professional athlete, but that’s the next best thing, I guess, to have your pizza shop in a major league stadium,” Lunardi said.

His home-game action came to a halt this year, however, with a fan-less MLB season. Slice on Broadway’s PNC Park location closed permanently in July.

It’s an example of the pandemic-fueled, economic contraction that has hit the North Shore restaurant scene. In addition to the dining restrictions facing restaurants in general, those on the North Shore are also enduring the loss of Pirates fans and a summer concert season, and anticipating a Steelers season with uncertain attendance policies.

Pirates games brought over 1.2 million fans last year. Steelers and Pitt Panthers games combined for around 864,000 patrons. The Kenny Chesney concert at Heinz Field, once scheduled for May 31, promised around 50,000 attendees. And that says nothing for various concerts and events that fill the North Shore’s summer season at Stage AE, PNC Park and Heinz Field.

“Sports are going on but no fans,” said Allegheny County Chief Executive Rich Fitzgerald. “Will that change in the coming days? It may. But it’s not going to be 38,000 people at PNC Park or 60,000 people at Heinz Field. It’s going to be a fraction of that, if that does occur. It’s just a challenging time.”

It’s a challenge that Michelle Bugg, part-owner of The Foundry on North Shore Drive, is unafraid to quantify.

“When we were just doing takeout, I’d say we were losing 90% of our business,” she said. “We didn’t have a huge takeout business to begin with. At this stage, with outdoor dining and 25% capacity indoors, we’re probably doing about 50% of the business we would normally do.”

The 25% indoor dining capacity allowance went into effect for Allegheny County on July 17, following the lead set by Gov. Tom Wolf just a few days earlier, but it doesn’t sit well with many restaurant owners and supporters.

Pennsylvania Restaurant & Lodging Association CEO John Longstreet is a leader in the movement to lobby Wolf to increase the indoor dining capacity limit from 25% to 50%. Without it, he says, Pennsylvania’s restaurant industry is in real trouble.

A recent Yelp survey determined that nationwide, 60% of the restaurants that closed temporarily as a result of the pandemic will not reopen. Longstreet has extrapolated that data to fit Pennsylvania, which suggests the same fate for 7,500 of Pennsylvania’s restaurants.

“Twenty-five percent capacity is the same as closing a restaurant, and that’s the sad part about it,” said Longstreet.

When asked about the restrictions, Nate Wardle, Pennsylvania Department of Health spokesman, points to case investigators’ data which indicated that hundreds of covid-19 cases originated in a bar or restaurant. State and federal health agencies’ observations also support the state’s dining restrictions, he said.

When thriving, the restaurant industry is the second largest private employer in Pennsylvania, supporting 580,000 people. According to Longstreet, 350,000 of those were out of work at the height of the pandemic.

“Unfortunately, they’re headed in that direction now again,” Longstreet said.

Knowing the hardships facing so many restaurant owners, Lunardi knows he’s lucky, despite the closure of his PNC Park pizza shop.

He has bookworthy stories about cooking through the first rain delay, the 2,000-plus slices of pizza he’d sell per game and the families who made a Slice pie a part of their game-day routine.

His three other Slice locations are thriving. At his home, there’s a newly-built fire pit in his backyard, inviting summer-night family time that was formerly reserved for hungry Pirates fans.

Resilience is a hallmark of restaurant owners. “The most important thing to do right now is to allow restaurants to use their ingenuity to get some business back in and be able to try to keep alive to make it to the other side,” said Longstreet, speaking of North Shore restaurants in particular.

The Foundry’s owners — Andrew Stackiewicz, and Rob and Michelle Bugg — plan on sporting event watch parties for spontaneous patrons and restriction-observing private parties, as requested. They’re even toying with the idea of an outdoor screen and projector to bring the game to their patio patrons in a bigger way, like a mini-“Mario’s TV.”

Down the block at Southern Tier Brewery, they’re shooting for a “tailgate atmosphere” with game-day specials to match.

“Since we’re so close to both stadiums, you might be able to hear the crack of the bat or the whistle of a first down if you try hard enough,” said Margo Goodale of Artisanal Brewing Ventures, the company formed by the merger of Victory and Southern Tier Brewing.

If ingenuity can sustain these businesses long enough, several methods of state and federal financial support could be available to restaurant owners.

“There are probably about six different bills that provide restaurant relief in either the House or Senate in Pennsylvania, and of course the fourth covid package in Washington,” said Longstreet.

Pennsylvania House Bill 2615, sponsored by state Rep. Todd Stephens, R-Montgomery, proposes grants up to $50,000 for eligible restaurants in need. There’s work being done to directing more funding to the Paycheck Protection Program, which awarded $42 billion to the accommodation and food service sector earlier this year. And, according to Longstreet, there are efforts to eliminate late fees and penalties for delayed sales tax payments and repayment programs for delinquent accounts.

Restaurants of the North Shore are certainly supported by the venues and events that surround them, but the Pittsburgh dining scene is a destination in itself.

A San Francisco-based restaurant and hospitality consulting firm, af&co., named Pittsburgh its top American food city for 2019. It’s an honor not lost on Fitzgerald, who cites the influx of technology-based businesses and subsequent restaurant boom as contributors to the award.

“The frustrating part for someone like me is over the last 10 years, we have created such a vibrant economic condition in Downtown, in the Strip District, in Lawrenceville, in East Liberty, in the North Shore,” he said. “We’ve seen such a vibrant restaurant and foodie scene. We’ve actually been lauded nationally with some of the publications and some of the ratings coming out. So, just when we were really hitting our stride, all of a sudden March comes with covid, and it just changed everything.”

Even if it’s temporary, the culture of the North Shore has changed, and along with it must come a new definition of success.

“I think it’s really just maximizing what we can do at the restaurant and having the patio and the seating that we can fill on dinner service inside filled every night of the week,” said Michelle Bugg of The Foundry. “To fill every seat that we can safely.”