Floyds Cajun Seafood meeting needs in tough times It's one thing when the fish aren't biting.It's a completely different scenario when the customers aren't biting the fish.Bret Floyd cares about his customers, but he understands that in the current environment many of them must find a way to survive without patronizing his establishment.One of three owners/operators of Floyds Cajun Seafood restaurants across the Texas gulf coast, Floyd is feeling the financial crush of the coronavirus pandemic.As much as it pains him to not meet all the needs of his patrons, it hurts him even more to have to reduce staff."Between all the stores, we laid off between 150 and 200 employees," Floyd said, "but we plan on hiring everybody back."I've got some guys that have been with us for years. That's the hard part of this."While there are dark days now in the restaurant business, Floyd is hoping there's a light at the end of the tunnel that's getting brighter every day."The Pearland location of Floyds, a popular restaurant, is currently open 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., for take-out orders.The Webster and Sugar Land locations have been closed until further notice."Webster has been open since 2004," Floyd said. "We were about to have our big 15-year parking lot reunion on April 20, and of course, that's been cancelled."That's been a tradition since we had our place in The Heights. We'd had parking lot parties and the big crawfish boil, and everybody looks forward to it."Floyd said the pandemic has forced difficult decisions, none of which are pleasant."Basically, we shut down Webster and Sugar Land based on the revenue from to-go orders," he said. "Both of those locations are in an area where there are a lot of restaurants."If you look at Webster, that's all there is - restaurants and retail. Sugar Land is the same way. Right in the middle of a mall and next to a hospital. Nobody's coming from the hospital to eat with us."The Beaumont location is also open, operating for take-out orders, too.
The Pearland location on Broadway near Friendswood is meeting its customers' needs as best as possible."I guess being in a primarily residential area has helped," Floyd said. "Usually, the opposite is true if you're in a residential area."I've brought all my general managers and my kitchen managers from Sugar Land and Webster to Pearland to work."I'm trying to keep my key guys as long as I can. When we open back up, it's going to be like opening a restaurant again."The one thing I guess I can say, if there's any good thing in all this, is that it's given us time to clean and do some projects in the stores."
The uncertainty of everything relating to the virus and his business is a day-to-day adventure."When we made the decisions at Webster and Sugar Land, we didn't know anything about the (Small Business Administration) loans," Floyd said. "At that point, everything was still a question, and it still is."You look at your payroll protection plan and the different plans from SBA and you just don't know what to think. Nobody really knows exactly what you're going to get."We've completed all of our paperwork (for loans). We're meeting with our bank today. The good thing is we have a great local bank we deal with, and they're assisting us with what we need."Floyd and fellow owners Floyd Landry and Gary Pearce experienced a different challenge during Hurricane Harvey."This is not like a hurricane," Floyd said. "You worry in a hurricane that you'll lose your employees to somebody else or them moving to another area."That's just the service industry world. With this, there's nowhere to go for these employees. You've got some of these kitchen guys…the restaurant business is all they know."They go from one restaurant to another restaurant seven days a week."Floyd has crunched the numbers for sales, and they're not pretty. Still, he's better off than many others."For the first two weeks, from March 16 to March 29, we were down 48 percent," he said. "That's only because we had two stores open. I'm going to bet in the next two-week time period it's going to be at 70 percent."Floyd said he's tried to provide a timetable for his employees, but he knows that could be out of his hands."What I told my employees is that we're going to make it through April," he said. "Then we'll see. My goal is to stay open through April and hope this doesn't exist past then."While dine-in revenue is sorely missed, Floyd said he was also counting on other streams of income."I had probably 10 crawfish boils lined up for the month of April and they're gone," he said. "I'm talking big crawfish boils - stuff we've been doing for 25 years."I had one for Gulf Coast Veterinary Clinic off Loop 610. Dr. (Wayne) Whitney is a big LSU grad, and I've been doing his crawfish boil every April for 25 years. Maybe 27 years. It's stuff like that we've been doing forever, and now it's a tradition that's going to break."Amidst the deflating news, Floyd is keeping his chin up."The community support has been great, if you follow us on Facebook and social media," he said. "We've been posting specials on there, and people love our family packs."Floyd said the restaurant community in the Pearland area is a tight knit one."I'm friends with Russell (Ybarra, Gringo's Mexican Kitchen), the guys at Grazia, Ronnie Killen," Floyd said. "Believe it or not, we all talked when this started going down."I talked with Alan (Franks) from Swamp Shack and to T-Bone Tom's. In a way, you compete against each other, but we're all in it together. Buddy Schultz, who owns (Number 13 restaurant) in Galveston called me immediately and said 'Bret, what are you going to do? Are you going to file insurance?'"I said I don't think the insurance is going to cover this," Floyd said. "There's no pandemic provision in our insurance even with business interruption. We have no pandemic provision, but hopefully the higher courts or whoever is responsible for doing that will put something in there. I hope this never happens again."Floyd said the franchise stores in Cypress (two years old) and Mont Belvieu (six months old) have been hit hardest.While business may be sagging for Floyd's, he knows there are others in worse predicaments."I really think, unfortunately, that some restaurants may have to shut down permanently," he said. "The guys that haven't been in it before or haven't been in it that long, it's really going to affect them."This payroll protection plan…if it can get me some money and we can get it going again, I think we can make it happen.""We love our customers and they love us. We have a lot of loyal customers and we get new ones every day. This is tough. I can't compare this to anything I've been through."Floyds Cajun Seafood in Pearland, which opened in 2009, is located at 1300 East Broadway.dlvr.it/RT7bM5