How the coronavirus pandemic drained a Sacramento restaurant at its busiest time of year
Raed Eisa’s problems started in February.
Falafel & Shawarma Planet, Eisa’s fast casual Middle Eastern restaurant at 4220 Florin Road, Suite K, wasn’t seeing its usual economic bounce-back coming out of the winter months. Other Southgate Plaza business owners Eisa spoke to had similarly poor sales, he said.
The three-year-old restaurant needed customers in March and April, traditionally its strongest months. Instead, traffic cratered under the coronavirus pandemic and statewide shelter-in-place order. Falafel & Shawarma Planet exited March with a $2,000 deficit and lost $3,000 in May, and sales over the peak months are down 50 to 70 percent from years prior, Eisa said.
“I’m not sure how we’re going to continue with this situation,” he said. “For me, it looks really, really, really difficult.”
The state-mandated pivot to takeout-only has hurt nearly every restaurant’s sales, but Falafel & Shawarma Planet faces an additional obstacle: Ramadan. Falafel & Shawarma Planet typically caters to about 200 people a night during the monthlong holiday, which started on April 23 and calls for Muslims to fast from sunrise to sunset.
But mosques are empty, and those catering orders have evaporated. Muslims, who make up 50 percent of Falafel & Shawarma Planet’s customer base, won’t stop by for lunch until May 23. The restaurant now closes at 7:30 p.m., a half-hour before the sunset prayers, and staying open until 11 or so to feed those fasting isn’t financially viable, Eisa said.
“May is going to be a big, big, big loss for us, mainly because of Ramadan,” Eisa said. “The only thing that kept us running in past years (was) the catering orders ... now, this year, no more. It’s very bad from everywhere. Really hard.”
Falafel & Shawarma Planet is getting by for now on 20-25 delivery orders — in which companies such as DoorDash and Uber Eats strip anywhere from 15 to 30 percent of the revenue — and 10 to 12 in-person orders per day, Eisa said. His applications for U.S. Small Business Administration disaster relief and Paycheck Protection Program loans proved fruitless, though the restaurant received $1,000 in a Florin Road Partnership grant.
Ironically, Eisa’s services would likely be in high demand right now had he stuck with his old career. Degrees in telecommunications and biomedical engineering led to a job as a business development manager for International Systems Engineering in Saudi Arabia, where he oversaw the establishment of technology-focused “smart schools” and telemedicine programs before moving to Elk Grove in 2015.
Friends told Eisa he would have to start over as a junior engineer in the U.S., a prospect that seemed humiliating after 20 years in the industry. He opened Falafel & Shawarma Planet instead.
“Now I am really tired. I wish I was not, but I spend a lot doing this in terms of time and money,” Eisa said. “And still there is a lot to pay from when we started (three years ago). It’s very hard to leave it at this point.”
This story was originally published May 21, 2020 at 5:00 AM.