Progress 2021: How two Palmer restaurants are surviving COVID

The COVID pandemic has taken a toll on local businesses, especially the restaurant industry which is notorious for having slim profits. Two Palmer restaurants, Humdingers and the Palmer City Ale House needed to adapt to the restrictions brought on by COVID if they were to keep business going.

“The Ale House is still going to be here when this is all over and we just appreciate the community that’s here because COVID will pass but our community will still be here,” Corey Brister the General Manager of the Ale House said, “and we want to continue serving the community now and in the future when this is all just a distant memory.”

Though COVID contractions appear to be declining, sales have changed for both restaurants. To-go sales for the Ale House are a greater proportion of their total sales since before the pandemic. Humdingers, which has been only take out since last March, is hit-or-miss whether they are busy or not, and saw declining sales during last summer, according to Michael Miller, a manager at Humdingers.

“It’s all about the community really. I think the community is why were still in business,” Miller said.

As the social distancing mandates took effect last March, many restaurants needed to adjust how they serve food.

“We’d heard about the imminent shut down like a few days prior, so it was a very quick just strategizing just what we could do,” Brister said.

For the Ale House, they needed to keep business going and to keep some of their employees working, so they tried something new and created a delivery service. Some employees volunteered to drive around to deliver food, especially those who could handle the spring-time Alaskan roads.

“They mostly volunteered for it like ‘yeah, my car’s got four wheel drive I can do that,’” Brister said.

They have since partnered with DoorDash delivery service.

Though they extended the opportunity to deliver food to all employees and have reorganized part of their kitchen to handle their increasing to-go sales, they had to at one point lay off 85 to 90 percent of their staff from the kitchen and the front of house.

Employees from both Humdingers and the Ale House came into contact with people who contracted COVID during the second wave toward the end of last year, forcing each restaurant to temporarily close at one point. In mid-December, the Ale House shut down for a weekend since an employee was notified during their shift that they were in contact with someone who contracted COVID, according to Brister. Two employees at Humdingers needed to quarantine and the restaurant’s slim staff forced them to close for three days in mid-November, according to Miller.

Humdingers had to cut their staff of 12 to 13 people down to five once the pandemic began. Normally around that time they would hire more employees to meet the summer demand and to replace those who routinely leave, but since COVID continues to restrict business today, they still have not increased their staff. Since last March, Humdingers has been closed for dine-in and has switched their entire operation to takeout and Miller says that since Humdingers sells primarily pizzas it allows them to operate with a reduced staff and inconsistent sales.

“We are not doing dine in still but that’s our choice,” Miller said.

Despite COVID making life and business harder for those in the Valley and everywhere, Miller believes some good has come of it.

“That’s actually one positive thing that’s come out of COVID not just for the restaurant, but I think for the community and the world actually we start seeing people actually caring for other people and taking care of other people,” Miller said.