Crisis Management #47: Comune on weathering the storm and what it needs to see to reopen - Women Of Influence

Comune will reopen for business, but that was never a sure thing.

Co-owner Joe Galati said he met with his accountant in November. The accountant asked him what Galati believed his chances of going bankrupt were.

Galati said 20%.

The accountant said 90%

“That hit the hardest,” Galati said. “There’s a very good chance this is all going away. … That lights a fire. That’s not going to happen. What are we going to do?”

The situation is better today.

Galati explains why he is more optimistic now than he was a few months ago in this episode of Crisis Management, Columbus Business First’s podcast about doing business amid the coronavirus pandemic.

He took a more conservative approach to business in the past year than many peers in the industry. He always expected this to be a long event, not just a few weeks.

Though the entire restaurant industry was challenged, Comune was among the establishments facing added difficulties. It was never built to have a thriving carryout business and the dine-in space was too small to reopen in any meaningful way. It’s still closed today.

But there were bright spots. The Parable Coffee pop-up has done well. There was some success with planned dinner events.

A return to some of the restaurant’s earliest dishes like crispy rice and its walnut-mushroom Bolognese is helping drive sales now.

“You can only hunker down so much,” he said. “At some point a business has to make its numbers.”