Black-Eyed Suzie’s Upstate is racing to find a new home with its current lease at 230 Partition Street in Saugerties set to expire at the end of October in the midst of a hot real estate market that’s left the eatery with few viable options.
“The particular challenge of this lease makes this already challenging time more challenging,” said Cheryl Paff who co-owns Black-Eyed Suzie’s with her partner Juan Tzitzimititla. Paff hails from Albany and Tzitzimititla was born in Puebla, Mexico, Paff met Tzitzimititla back in the 1990s while he was working in a restaurant she formerly owned in Manhattan’s East Village.
She said their current landlord has a buyer for the building who intends to run their own business. “They did not offer a lease to us,” Paff said.
Black-Eyed Suzie’s Upstate has been at its current location for six years. Prior to that, Paff and Tzitzimititla operated a catering-only operation in Woodstock.
She said they’re scouting out potential new locations where the eatery already has a strong customer base for its family-style-takeaway delivery service that became a big hit during the COVID-19 pandemic as people looked to avoid crowded areas over fears of contracting the virus.
But she admitted there are just not a lot of spaces out there for businesses looking to relocate.
“There’s not a whole lot on the market, and the real estate market went through the roof,” Paff said. “People are not looking to move around.”
She said they are eyeing a possible new location in Uptown Kingston, but as of right now, she’s not sure if that will come through.
Paff said they had a verbal agreement with their present landlord to renew their lease last year, but then COVID hit. “We decided to go month to month because of the uncertainty of the situation. Pre-COVID we had an agreement for a certain amount, post-COVID that amount changed.”
Then later last year she went to her landlord about doing improvements to make accommodations for COVID-19-era dining, like putting a pavilion over Black-Eyed Suzie’s patio so they could serve outside more readily. And that’s when she says her landlord told her they were looking to sell.
“They wanted to sell the building to take advantage of the market,” she said. “I wasn’t going to invest in those improvements.” Now that’s left them with just a few months to find a place.
Paff said they are even considering renting a kitchen for the winter. “There are some other caterers who are not doing much during winter,” she said.
She said they’ve found a successful niche in catering by offering drop-off catering to smaller events like family gatherings and smaller groups of friends.
But all the uncertainty will take a significant bite out of the business, she noted. “It’s difficult for a catering business because you need to book three months out. It’s a bit of a challenge to plan for jobs when you don’t know where you’re going to be.”
But perhaps Black-Eyed Suzie’s biggest hit during the pandemic, she said is its family-style-takeaway delivery service, which focuses on healthy comfort food.
Paff said while they had this offering before COVID-19, it really clicked with people during the pandemic as they looked to stock their fridge with wholesome meals without having to venture out. “That just took off, people were at a point where they were tired of cooking, they were trying to homeschool kids while working from home, and there was fatigue as people were cooking all the meals at home,” she said. “It became a huge hit.”
Paff recalled how she brainstormed with their staff on how to keep everyone employed during the ban on indoor dining. The staff and servers volunteered to become drivers while everyone else became phone and internet order takers and facilitated pickups and deliveries, she said.
“Customers were supportive and generous with their tipping,” she said. It just blew us away.”
She found Black-Eyed Suzie’s Upstate’s staff ended up making a comparable living to what they were doing before the pandemic.
“People were getting what they needed, and we were keeping our staff employed and we kept them making an income. It’s in huge part due to the generosity of our customers.”
Paff said before that Black-Eyed Suzie’s Upstate had initially shut down altogether from March to May 2020 as the virus spread, but customers kept calling and asked them if they were okay and if the staff was okay.
A customer suggested a fundraiser for them and that convinced Paff to help their staff by giving them a weekly stipend and a bag of groceries while the eatery was closed. “That helped everyone get through that time,” she said.
Even after they came back they faced ever-changing protocols, but people started getting vaccinated and she saw light at the end of the tunnel.
Black-Eyed Suzie’s found a successful niche during a pandemic that’s resulted in the shuttering of countless restaurants worldwide, but Paff constantly fears she’ll be priced out by the current real estate market. A market that’s become one of the hottest nationwide, exasperating a long-standing affordable housing shortage that’s morphed into an outright crisis throughout the Mid-Hudson Valley.
“I’m hoping things settle down price-wise during the winter,” she said.
She said on top of all this they’re facing staff shortages, rising food costs and the rise of COVID-19 variants like the Delta variant that has led to a large spike in virus cases across the region this summer.
And the present staff is facing fatigue as they can’t find more staff to lighten the workload, Paff said.
“Teachers used to work here summers, kids used to work here summers,” Paff said, noting that’s dried up. Still, she doesn’t blame people for not wanting to take a summer job after a year of pandemic-related stress.
“They just want to have a fun summer,” she said. “Look at the struggles staff are going through in grocery stores and restaurants.”
She pleaded for people to be kind and patient with anyone working in the hospitality industry who are used to providing a warm and fun environment, but now has to take on added duties they never signed up for like policing mask mandates with sometimes surly customers.
It puts them in a stressful position,” Paff said.
Paff asserted that Black-Eyed Suzie’s Upstate’s customer have been hugely supportive throughout the pandemic.
And right now she’s trying to make the most of a difficult situation and she hopes this move may offer an opportunity for growth in a bigger more central location than the small Village of Saugerties storefront they occupy now.
“We’ve reached the capacity where we have to turn down business more often,” Paff said.
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