Restaurateur Tiffani Faison Is Looking To Do Right By Workers

On Thursday, award-winning chef and restaurateur Tiffani Faison joined Boston Public Radio to check in about how reopening is going and the lasting impacts of the pandemic on her industry.

Faison owns Sweet Cheeks Q, Tiger Mama, Fool’s Errand, and Orfano, which are all bundled together on Boylston Street in Boston's Fenway neighborhood.

“Throughout the years, we’ve built incredible service and great food ... in an environment that I think people like to be in,” she said. “I wanna make sure that we build some sort of protective fence around that, and make sure that we open in a way that’s not just flinging the doors open for a money grab … allowing our team to feel like they can’t succeed night after night after night.”

For Faison, that’s meant limiting operating hours and the number of patrons that can be served at any given time.

“I have to figure out what’s going to be solvent as a business owner, and so one of the things that I've chosen to do is take it slow — and to my own financial peril,” she said. “But what we’re doing is allowing sustainability for our team.”

As of July, the barbeque at Sweet Cheeks Q is available Tuesday through Sunday, and the Southeast Asian-inspired Tiger Mama is open from Wednesday through Saturday. The standing tapas bar and wine shop Fool’s Errand is offering private dining reservations, while Orfano, Faison’s Italian restaurant, remains temporarily closed.

“We’re very publicly asking for your kindness and your patience,” Faison said, noting that the wide-reaching impacts of the pandemic on restaurants are “certainly not over.” She said none of her businesses are likely to return to solvency until 2022.

The former “Top Chef” finalist also talked about the lasting mark left by food delivery services like Uber Eats, Grubhub and DoorDash, who saw the state’s 15% cap on service fees for restaurants expire with the end of the Commonwealth’s COVID-19 state of emergency.

“From top to bottom, it’s starting to wreck local restuarants and independent restaurants," she said of the fees, which can run as high as 40% for some local restaurants. “We’re starting to see the other side of this, and what we’ll see is a lot of empty spaces.... I think we’re not done with the closings.”

Accounting for all that uncertainty, Faison said customers will have to bear with their favorite local and independent restaurants as things return to their new form of normalcy, even if that means paying a little more for your fried chicken sandwich.

“We need our guests to hold our hand and come along with that, and realize that there’s no gauging going on here. We’re trying to pass along the costs,” she said. “I cannot make it cheaper, or else we don’t survive.”