: These frontline workers joked about opening a restaurant — and then did it during the pandemic

It all started with an after-work craving for food from their native Philippines.

Since August 2020, three nurses at Mt. Sinai Hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side have also had a second demanding job — running their own Filipino restaurant. Joan Calanog, Jude Canela and Maricris Dinopol opened the restaurant, Bilao, while working 12-hour overnight shifts caring for COVID-19 patients.

The frontline workers had craved large meals as their shifts ended, and didn’t want to commute to the nearest Filipino restaurant open at that hour in Queens. They also saw a possible market for Filipino food near Mt. Sinai, which was close to several other hospitals and what they knew was a sizable population of Filipino healthcare workers. 

The New York Metropolitan area had the third-largest population of Filipinos in the U.S. as of 2019, according to the Pew Research Center, and one in four Filipino adults in the New York-New Jersey area work in the healthcare industry, according to a ProPublica analysis.

Rather than be deterred by the timing of their opening during a crisis for the city, the owners saw an opportunity. 

“If everything closes up, you open,” said Canela. “If you’re the only ones open around the area, customers will still come. Plus, we were frontliners, so we wanted to share our very own to other fellow frontliners, at least to give them a little hope.”

Canalog, Canela and Dinopol are equal owners of Bilao, with each one investing around $30,000, they said. While they applied for pandemic-related government assistance, Bilao did not qualify for the Paycheck Protection Program as a new business. 

The name of the restaurant, Bilao, is a woven tray traditionally used to clean and dry rice in the Philippines. The trays adorn walls in the space, which was previously a bakery.

The owners benefited from a commercial rental market weakened by the pandemic, and said they were able to negotiate a 10-year lease with favorable terms. Additionally, since the previous tenant left the space in good shape, they said they didn’t have to spend much on renovations.

The partners divide responsibility in three, with Dinopol leading day-to-day operations, Calanog handling finances and Canela in charge of marketing.

Interest was high almost from the beginning, with new customers arriving through networking and word of mouth, and the partners struggled with the demands of two full-time jobs, often working around 60 hours a week. Canela said he would meditate in the back of a cab on his way to the restaurant.

“Getting off from work, we had to go straight here,” Canela said. “We cannot work every day for 24 hours. That was hard.”

None of the partners had prior restaurant experience, though Dinopol had business experience as the owner of a local dry cleaner. They have gone from five employees to 15 at Bilao, and told MarketWatch they hope to expand.

But even as they grow the business, all three say they plan to continue their work as nurses. Canela has been a nurse for 10 years, Calanog 6 years, and Dinopol 5 years.

“I don’t have a plan of leaving nursing, because once you’re a nurse, you’re always a nurse,” said Dinopol. “For me, it’s my job, it’s my passion, so I don’t see myself quitting my job as a nurse.”

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June 09, 2021 at 02:57AM
Jennifer Weiss, , Joseph Lingad
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B20C05575-04D4-B545-748D-915BED7A91A4%7D&siteid=rss&rss=1