When Kevin and Debbie Adey opened their Brooklyn restaurant FARO in 2015, it was a dream come true. Now, they are dealing with the harsh realities of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Video Transcript

KEVIN ADEY: There is not a penny to spare in the restaurant business. There's no extra employees. There's no extra dollars. There's no extra anything.

DEBBIE ADEY: I think we complement each, other not only personally, but professionally. He's got the kitchen and the back of the house. I got the front of the house. I got the business side. We have a great manager.

You know, so I really feel like we're good at what we do, and we enjoy it. You know, it's tough right now, so.

STEPHANIE ASYMKOS: COVID-19, it came on all of our collective radars in January. Talk to me about when it became an imminent presence in your life.

KEVIN ADEY: There's a reason why we have to wash our hands all the time and sanitize stuff all the time. Dealing with just food-borne illness, you know, you have to take precaution for.

When you add in the public and them not washing their hands and all these things, it's not a-- you know, we knew that you can't responsibly keep a restaurant open with people in it with where this was going.

There is not a penny to spare in the restaurant business. There's no extra employees. There's no extra dollars. There's no extra anything.

You know, the margins are so slim that when you start altering your income in any negative way, you have to alter--

DEBBIE ADEY: Everything.

KEVIN ADEY: --everything. I would say at least 90% of the people who are working here, this is what they want to do. They didn't make a bad decision and have to wait tables.

I hope that there's something else out there for them other than unemployment, you know.

STEPHANIE ASYMKOS: This is hard, and I'm sorry for hitting a nerve. But tell me about how you announced to your employees. Did you gather them all together? How did you disseminate this information?

KEVIN ADEY: You know, in the light of social distancing, we told people electronically, so we could do it all at once, so no one would hear from somebody else other than us.

DEBBIE ADEY: I think that the staff knew, to some degree, that it was going to be inevitable.

KEVIN ADEY: It is very hard.

DEBBIE ADEY: It's-- yesterday was an extremely difficult day. But you know, we have a great crew here. We couldn't, obviously, do what we do without the staff. Every one of them is invited back.

KEVIN ADEY: Yeah, everybody will have a job offer when we get back. That's why it's so important that it gets reopened, you know, in the unrestricted fashion, so that I can look at every employee, hit send. We're back, you know. And I don't have to make choices between, you know, half of my cooks.

DEBBIE ADEY: Yeah.

KEVIN ADEY: This needs to get back to complete normalcy as quickly as possible, because half measures don't work in the restaurant industry.

STEPHANIE ASYMKOS: When do you foresee us opening restaurants again? And do you think things will be the same?

DEBBIE ADEY: Honestly, for me, it's hour by hour, day by day. I don't know what's going to happen.

I know that we're going to be shut down indefinitely. Hopefully, it's, you know, shorter rather than longer. You know, that's--

KEVIN ADEY: We also are worrywarts warts by nature. So we had a lot of stuff, you know, squirreled away for in case of emergency. We're one of the fortunate few that I think, you know--

DEBBIE ADEY: Could come back from this.

KEVIN ADEY: You know, we could definitely come back from this just as strong as before, no matter how long this lasts. You know, we have a plan.

Faro is going to be open again. There's no doubt. If it's six weeks or six months, we'll open again, and we'll serve pasta to the neighborhood we love.

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