How an Oakland Bar Is Preparing to Reopen

An Oakland bar navigates reopening

My colleague Jack Nicas usually covers tech in the Bay Area, but recently he snagged what sounded like a dream assignment: reporting on his local bar. It was actually heart-wrenching.

Here’s an update about the Hatch, an Oakland watering hole:

On March 15, Gov. Gavin Newsom called for the state’s restaurants and bars to close to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Restaurateurs and bar owners across California knew they were in for a struggle, but they expected the closure wouldn’t last much more than a month.

Three months later, California’s restaurants and bars are now just starting to open. In many cases, diners are kept outside, and some bars without kitchens are remaining shuttered.

For the public, the lockdown has been an inconvenience. Many of us have sharpened our cooking skills — or become even more reliant on takeout and delivery. But for many of the millions of Californians who work in the service industry, the past few months have been economic anguish.

When the lockdown began, I started following my local watering hole in Oakland, a side-street hideaway called the Hatch, to understand the economic toll on the bar and its staff. In that story, which we published earlier this month, I wrote about the bar’s owner, Louwenda “Pancho” Kachingwe, and his creative efforts to save the Hatch, including battling with delivery apps and scrambling for a stimulus loan. By the time we published, he had burned through $40,000 of the bar’s emergency funds and his personal money, but he had some hope after securing a $72,500 federal loan.

I also kept up with several of his employees. Santos, the 56-year-old cook, lost his job the same day as his six children and hunkered down in a three-bedroom house he shared with 11 family members on the outskirts of Oakland. They gathered each night to pray for a way to pay their bills. The last time we spoke, they had missed their latest rent payment. Maria, the 55-year-old undocumented cleaner, battled extreme back pain that turned out to be cancer while also struggling to pay rent.

Both said they were fortunate not to have been touched by the virus; money was their biggest worry.

And Abel Oleson, a 34-year-old bartender, had $20 to his name shortly after the lockdown began but soon was making twice as much as he did at the Hatch with his stimulus-boosted unemployment checks.