The Garden Club hopes to keep its outdoor dining area

Like many businesses that made it through the pandemic, the Garden Club, a restaurant in South San Francisco serving burgers, sandwiches and other casual fare, has faced many challenges since March of last year.

And outdoor dining has helped the business thrive and is likely going to stick around for the dining experience.

“On nice days, people want to sit outside. And there’s still some people that aren’t comfortable so they prefer outdoor settings,” Sal Vitale, the restaurant’s owner, said.

Initially, Vitale held off on outdoor dining since he didn’t think it would be effective enough to sustain the business and also knew it would be tricky since the restaurant is inside a strip mall, he said.

“It’s been an interesting ride,” he said. “When we shut down in March, we were told it was gonna be two weeks. And then after two weeks, we were told a couple more weeks.”

During that time, he had to get rid of most of its food and freeze what they could and also took food to freeze at his girlfriend’s and his mom’s place. After that, he hired a consultant from the TV show Bar Rescue to help with the reopening. They reopened at the beginning of July and had to shut down five days later because everything was closed back down, he said.

“So again we restocked, we had to toss stuff out, very frustrating, very costly,” he said. “The government was good and was trying to help with [paycheck protection program] money and stuff but it still was not easy.”

In the middle of October, it was opened again for a month and a half before it had to close again. At that point, Vitale decided to try outdoor dining with the landlord’s permission to take up three parking spaces. The landlord is giving it a year to see how it goes and will possibly extend it afterward, he said.

It took trial and error with setting up a tent that was knocked down by the wind a few times before putting wooden fencing around it. And then later, a solid roof was put over the fencing.

After having to reopen and close some more times, the restaurant was slowly able to open again, from 25% to 50% to finally 100% last month.

“Both the combination of outdoor and indoor, we’re about 80% of our sales from two years ago,” he said.

The outdoor dining now has a nice setup with a TV, jukebox and a small bar set, and is still being worked on. The outdoor area fits about 35 people and it is hoped to be used to reserve for large parties.

The restaurant is also hiring now as it ramps up and gets busier.

julia@smdailyjournal.com

(650) 344-5200, ext. 105