 That's when usually people have lunch, so it would be appropriate to talk about restaurants of Hawaii. And the executive director of the Hawaii Restaurant Association is our co-host and contributor. And then Cheryl Masuoka, and she joins us today with Eric Workman, who is one of the executives, the marketing executives at the Polynesian Cultural Center in Latye. So we're going to talk about, gee, with a huge restaurant enterprise, if you will, in Latye, that is the Polynesian Cultural Center. They've got five restaurants there. We would be remiss if we did not discuss the Polynesian Cultural Center. It's a big deal. Okay. So, Cheryl, why don't you introduce Eric Workman and also introduce the scope of the show. Yes. Thank you so much, Jay, for having us on. Eric Workman is the executive vice president and chief marketing officer at the Polynesian Cultural Center. He oversees all the marketing, sales, and business development for the center. And right now, reopening has now, you know, the Polynesian Cultural Center was closed down for 10 months. And now they're reopening with increased sanitization procedures throughout the center and especially looking at, you know, their hands on in the village Samoa. So they now have sanitization stations all around the Polynesian Cultural Center. So today we're talking about, you know, we are the Hawaii Restaurant Association, the voice of Hawaii's restaurant and food service industry. When visitors plan their trip to Hawaii, Jay, one of the must do's on their bucket list is a Hawaiian luau, right? So when you think of Hawaii, you think of a luau and the celebration that comes along with it, with the leg greeting, I wore my leg today, the celebration of the beautiful sunsets, our trade wind breezes, gorgeous hula dancers with their grass skirts and their coconut bras, and the feast, the kalua pig, hot right out of the emu. Fresh chilled lomi lomi salmon, laulaus, and my favorite, which is the chilled haupias, right? So you think about all the yummy foods that are at a luau. However, this pandemic first appeared on the islands, and then we had our state mandatory stay at home orders and the travel restrictions. So the PCC Polynesian Cultural Center, we name it the PCC, closed their doors for 10 months, and the difficult impact to our local community was the furloughed employees. So now, as Governor Igay allows us to reopen, the Polynesian Cultural Center has reopened and now is welcoming back not only our visitors, but also our locals. Keeping in mind right now, we're in tier two. So in our Hawaii restaurants and at the Polynesian Cultural Center, they're practicing all the safe protocols, the six-foot distancing, only five people at a table while dining. All the employees have to wear face masks. Face masks are worn by all the guests unless they're eating or drinking. In fact, enhanced sanitizing and, you know, the PCC is an open air attraction and the luau, while it's covered, it's still outdoors and they're sanitizing with electronic electrostatic sprayers and another change at the luau is no longer are the guests allowed to serve themselves. They actually have servers there on the luau to serve you your food. So I'm going to now bring on Eric and he can tell us a little bit more about the impacts and what they're doing at the Polynesian Cultural Center to welcome back our guests. And we are very curious about the Polynesian Cultural Center. So let's drill down on a whole great background that Cheryl gave us. But what would you add to her comments? Well, she gave a great summary there. That was wonderful. I think she obviously knows us well. Yes, we we did open on January 18th after being closed for 10 months. And it has been a very limited opening. So we are everything closed down when when COVID happened back in January 18th of last year. I'm sorry, we open January 18. But back in March when we closed down, everything shut down all of our luau's all of our restaurants all of our shows everything. And so it's wonderful to have the the heartbeat of this community going again to hear the drums playing that to hear literally the CD activity, the excitement starting to to happen again has been really wonderful. We really want to welcome back to community. We want to welcome back visitors also. But we've worked very, very hard to make it a safe environment as well as fun and educational. So we we have we are open now five days a week. We're not we're closed on Wednesdays and Sundays. And we open at 345. And visitors can come in and take a brief canoe tour. That canoe used to fit 24 people approximately. Now we're lucky to get eight people on there with COVID spacing. But they take a canoe ride to the to one of the villages. And there they can participate in some activities. They have out that in the village even use hula hoops on the ground to space people out to ensure they stay socially distanced while participating. That's very clever. And yeah, lots of lots of fun little innovations to make it still fun enjoyable educational but still safe. We have hand sanitizing no touch dispensers everywhere. COVID signage that we've tried to make unique to each island and each location. There's there's their brief presentations that happened there in that village tried to bring some of our best of different islands into that one village. And then they go to the Luau where we've reimagined the Luau. So why we were sitting around for 10 months. We had a lot of time to think about what we can do better. And one of those areas we really focused on was the Luau. Our presentation in the Luau, which is a tribute to Queen Lillio Kalani. We've really enhanced that presentation, made it more meaningful, more impactful. It's Hawaii's only all Hawaiian Luau. There's you won't find fire knives in here. There's no Tahitian dancing. There's nothing nothing Samoa and nothing other culture. It's all Hawaiian. And again, we wanted to pay tribute to to Queen Lillio Kalani and believe that it's a great story that people need to hear as our as the last remaining monarch in Hawaii. So from there then reimagined the food. Greg Maples, who's our director of of our food has worked very hard with his team to really amp it up, raise a level of performance there with the food itself. All new menu and an enhanced vegetarian menu, vegan menu, even believe it or not for a Luau that that could even be possible. But throughout the Luau, it's the the number one priority is to make it safe. And we've got, you know, it starts back when our employees before they even come to work weekly, all of our employees are COVID testing. That that cost us about $20,000 a week, just in testing. But we're committed to creating a safe bubble here at PCC that makes it possible for our performers to stay healthy. And when they interact with each other, they are careful. Daily, every employee who comes into the center who works on these grounds must have a pass a daily health screening. And with a temp check, and eight questions that they pass. And if they they're weak on any one of those questions, they go right to one of our full time to full time safety officers that have to approve whether they're allowed to come on the grounds or not. And we dismiss them if there's any question on paid leave until we find out if they are positive or negative. In the Luau itself, we're capped at about 250 seats right now, which is about 12% of our pre COVID capacity. Guests do not serve themselves. All food is served to guests. Guests never touch or interact the food. All of our servers wear a mask or inverted face shield. All of our performers wear inverted face shields. It's a clear shield that allows to see some kind of movement of the lips, but still protect and do what is required. There's no reuse of of cups or any table service. Tables are socially distanced. As as Cheryl mentioned, those regulations are very clear. If there's more than one party at a table that is not together, we place a plexiglass shield between the parties to separate that table. All tables are cleaned, electrostatically they're cleaned before use. And then after they're cleared and at the end of the day, they're again sanitized with electrostatic sprayer, similar to the kind of sprayers that the airlines use for for sanitizing inside of a plane. So lots of work goes into making this a safe as well as a fun and educational experience. So if I count back 10 months from now, January, well, February, again, but that would be March, I guess you close. Yes. If you had to go back right now, you know, knowing all that we know, would you have closed at the same time or earlier or later? No, we were the first ones to close that I'm aware of. And we were just pulling our hair out in that decision, not wanting to do that. We have so many people responsible for and we knew what it could mean, but we knew we had to be safe and we had to lead in safety and be responsible. And I think a lot of people don't realize that business, especially an institution like the Polynesia Cultural Center, its reputation is critical. We couldn't risk the safety of our employees or having any kind of event that would mar our reputation in any way. So we had to be extremely cautious. We closed, end up being we were cautious. We closed what we thought was going to be for two weeks. And then within a week, people were people thought it was silly of us to do that. But within one week, everybody else closed down after we closed. We just saw it coming. Again, we tried to be as responsible as possible. We've tried to be as responsible now as we can in opening, as cautious and responsible. You're a commercial leader, so that really confirms it. So when you're closed, gee, there's a lot of property involved. And as you mentioned, there are a lot of staff involved, huge of thousands. Am I right to say thousands of people, part-time and full-time thousands? Is it gorgeous? Yeah, before we shut down, we had about 1400 employees. Wow. And you mentioned that the cultural aspect of the center is native wine issues and Queen Malia Kalani and the history of the 19th century and so forth. But you have, my recollection is, you have a lot of staff that's Pacific Islanders as well as Native Hawaiians who advance the cultural aspect of the center. How did they do in the course of 10 months? I mean, these guys are not making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, even in the best of times. How did they live? How did they survive? And how many of them had to leave town, never come back for you? Yeah, that's a great, great question. We, I mean, our Polynesian employees are the backbone. We were created to provide jobs, to bring students from the Pacific to the adjacent Brigham Young University. And we were to provide that, that employment for them to get that university education they wouldn't have been able to get otherwise. So we have a small core of full-time permanent employees augmented by this larger group of students from all over the South Pacific. But to your point, we've had, we have many, many of those students who couldn't even return home because their islands got shut down. So we have students from Tonga, Samoa, who have been here the whole time, who would love to return home, who haven't seen their families in a year. But they're here living on campus or living in the community. So fortunately, before COVID hit, we had saved for about five years. It saved everything we could in capital because we were going to build a new building. So we were saving for that time. And it was fortunate or whatever you want to call it, that we had that savings on hand that we then repurposed to use to keep as many employees as we could hold. Yeah, what a lucky break that you had that reserve. Yeah, yeah. We had saved for a rainy day. And the rainy day certainly came, the storm came. So you take care of them in some way while they were, while you were closed. I mean, how did you, you know, try to, you know, maintain the connection? Yeah, so many of our employees, so we did have an early round of employees who we offered voluntary severance packages to. Many, some took it and have left the island, unfortunately. Some are still in the community. But those who remain the bulk of the employees that remained, we have been committed to keeping them whole. So if they after receiving, if those who are furloughed, if they after being furloughed and with federal assistance on furlough, that adder, if they didn't stay, you know, substantially whole, then we would bring them back and continue to pay for their employment. And that has been the case with many of our employees and those who stayed. Well, as you said, we have a lot of grounds and facilities. We pulled weeds, we mowed, we trim hedges, we painted, we did some capital work that we could afford to do in projects that would, that a shutdown was helpful. Our whole lagoon, 42 acres, we have a giant lagoon that runs through the whole area. We drained the whole thing, cleaned it out, saved most of the fish and, and refilled it to where now it looks wonderful. That's a great business. That's good business on all sides. You know, your place probably looks better than it has in a long time. It's been cleaned up. Your employees who you supported through the course of the 10 months probably love you to distraction. And on a moral level, it's been very nice that you did that. Good for you, Eric. Well, it's been a huge team effort and everybody here is committed to making that and helping everybody make it through this. Well, we are, we are ready to get back to work though. Of course. And so the question, you know, you're the marketing officer, the chief of marketing for the huge job because you have what I mentioned is say hundreds of millions of tourists come around over the course of a year. That's a lot. And you have to, you know, make it known that the door is open. And so at some point, probably within the last month or two, you knew again, pre-planning you, you knew that you were going to reopen. So as the marketing officer, somebody tells you, Eric, it's time to get started again. You know, to get the bubble machine working again. How do you do that? How do you reach out to your constituency around the world and advise them to come down and, you know, enjoy the center again? Yeah. Yeah, you're right. It's a tough job. Thank you for reminding me. We have a great team that works very hard to get the word out. We have shifted most of our resources to digital online promotion. We're trying hard to reach out to people who have any plans of coming to Hawaii to help them know that we're open and we're here before they ever arrive. There are so many fewer people than are here now or coming now that were before. We're waiting for them to come back in larger numbers because it's really not sustainable where we are today. We maybe don't want to go back to where we were and the high numbers where we were for Hawaii. We were talking about traffic earlier, but we need more to keep everybody whole. So yeah, we're doing all that we can to reach out to them digitally. We want to support Hawaii Tourism Authority and the efforts they're making to reach out to bring people back. If we just let people know that Hawaii is, if you keep the rules and you come back and you are a responsible visitor and you're careful and you're respectful and you get the tests that you need before you come and you wear a mask while you're here, this could be one of the safest places in the world to be. And as more people learned that, I was looking at charts last night, Hawaii is by far, I mean, at the bottom of the list of all the states in the United States for COVID and we do have a safe island environment here like nowhere else in the world. It's remarkable because we do have tourists and they could bring COVID anytime. So as you say, we have to make and enforce the rules. We do that. So let me go to the restaurants. So five restaurants you mentioned. Are all the restaurants different? Or is there a common denominator theme for them? And I guess also I want to know have they changed in that theme and that common denominator now that you're reopening? Yeah, wonderful question. We have, we do have five. We've only opened, so we opened several months ago, we opened Pounders, which is open. It's in our Hukilau marketplace, which is open to the public at all times. That has been open to mostly to Kamaina now for several months and they're doing well with the number of people we do have come. But it used to be about, you know, we have a good share of visitors and a good share of local Kamaina in there. Things haven't changed much after the opening now with Pounders. We still have all the same rules that we helped to pioneer, I believe in many ways, with the social distancing, hand wash, sign in for contact tracing. Everyone wears mask unless you're actively eating. All of those rules we carefully monitor and maintain those. What about the menus? Have you changed the menus? No, not really. The menus have stayed very much the same. Where the big changes came were in the Luau. We do now have just the one Luau restaurant open and just the one venue. So like I said, we're only operating at about 12% of the venue, the Luau capacity that we used to have. That's a problem because Luau is an economies of scale issue. If you have a little tiny Luau, it's not the same thing. It's a big one. And of course, you still have to pay the expenses. Yeah, absolutely. And on the North Shore, nothing is cheap. Everything crumbles to dust within months. So it's constant maintenance, constant upkeep. But we feel right now in this soft start mode that we're in with just 250. We cap the Luau at 250 people a day. It allows us, what's that? A lot of people. I mean, it's in the absolute number. That's quite a few people. I mean, at the height of it, how much was it? It was a lot. We would run two of those venues twice a night. That was just our Luau's. And then we have our buffet, which operates separately. Is that both outside? So all of our Luau's are outside. Our buffet restaurant is not outdoors. And that's one of the reasons we haven't opened it yet. The Luau's, since they are outdoor venues, we are more confident that we can operate those unquestionably safely. Yeah. But so what about you? You haven't opened them all right now? Will you open them all? Or are some of the restaurants going to not be open? It's a combination of there's not enough traffic to warrant opening all of them. If we had the demand, we'd have to really look carefully at can we open each of them safely. I believe that we could. If the demand was there, we could open our Luau's and operate as we are today in a safe manner. I believe we could open our buffet. We would obviously have to change that significantly because we would not allow people to serve their own food. We'd have to entirely change that format. It strikes me that you're focusing on as well you should in terms of marketing anyway. Safety. You're focusing on that. And people are very concerned about that. I know a fair amount of your trade is from right here in the state, for that matter, right here in Oahu. So people aren't going to come out of their houses. They're not going to make the trip unless they feel that it's safe, especially around restaurants. So the question or the question is, and we've talked to, you know, Cheryl and I have talked to a lot of restaurants over the last few months. It dawns on me that you must take the steps to be safe. But hearing all the steps you're taking, it strikes me and it costs money to be safe. All these things you're talking about are different than they were before. They're innovations that didn't, you didn't have to worry about it before. Now you do. And that's got to add to your daily expense. It's like those tests for, what did you say, $20,000 a day? That's a lot of bread. You didn't have to pay before. So, Query, how do you handle that? I mean, how do you make that work? Because that's right off the bottom line. Yeah, no, it's painful. And it is, those Oatsets are about $20,000 a week. A week, sorry. It's not sustainable long term. We can't keep doing this. We're opening now to kind of get the flywheel turning, to get it going, to keep our, to get our people trained to refine our processes, to make sure that we can do this safely and scale up only as we're capable of doing safely. But it's not, this is not sustainable. We can't do this and continue to provide for our people. Something dramatic would have to happen if we can't get back to larger volumes, larger numbers. So we really need visitors to come back soon. The local market, we love our local market, but it's not enough to sustain what needs to be done here to provide jobs for the many hundreds of people that we have to provide jobs for. I wonder, Cheryl, do you know the answer to this? And maybe you do, Eric. Are restaurant workers essential? Yes, they are. And can restaurant workers, they fit in the tiers of people who qualify for vaccines? Yes, we're one C. So we're the next tier. Once all of the healthcare workers and the elderly, we're the next tier. So many of the restaurants I sent out in January, the sign up sheet. So people just have to sign up and they're in the queue. And then once all of the essential workers and the capuna have been vaccine, yes, we're next on the list. So again, it's, you know, it's an executive marketing and planning function, just like the closing and the reopening is how you see the future. And the vaccines play a role in that, and especially helpful that, you know, restaurant workers can get those vaccines. And they'll hopefully be more vaccines. It'll be even easier. I'm talking about vaccines because I just came back from my second shot this morning at peer two. So I'm feeling a little safer. On the other hand, you know, we're all watching to see the variants and whether they create a sort of a secondary epidemic. Who knows? And finally, you're talking about an economy that has been in the tank. You know, while you were closed, a lot of business was closed, a lot of income was curtailed, people don't have the money necessarily. Although the truth is that Hawaiian people spend a lot of money in restaurants. Cheryl knows. And when the floodgates are open, they are going to come back huge numbers of people that come out of their homes and down for meal, meals after meals after meals at restaurants. I'm telling you now, because I'll be there, I'll be included. But you know, what's your plan, Eric, going forward? I mean, when is the coast going to be clear? When will it be safe? Yeah, well, we, we are really putting a lot of faith in that vaccine. I don't even want to think about the potential in the second wave of variants. We, we believe the vaccine will make the difference and make it people, help people to feel safe in coming out of their houses again. We want to welcome you here. We want to feed you well at the luau or at pounders. And so we hope our local community will, will see the things we're doing, feel comfortable coming, feel like this, they could get a little staycation of sorts, even if it's only an evening, to come out to the center and enjoy the show. I didn't even mention our show. We reopened our evening show. It's funny to look in the audience and see people spaced in groups of no larger than five with six feet all around them in a 2700 seat theater. But it's still a good experience. And so we still have, you know, almost the same number of staff performing in the show, all with their inverted face shields and performing in what we believe is a safe manner. But it's a fun getaway. And we would like to invite anybody on the island to come in. And we think you can have a safe, fun experience here. We really appreciate the work that HRA has done through Cheryl and through Greg to help the industry, help food, help restaurants to articulate what must be done to make it safe. And they've, their decisive, proactive leadership has been really critical to us. And I'm sure hundreds of other restaurants and mom and pop businesses and employers who are trying to get back to business, what they do is critical for us. And we've really, really appreciated all the work that they've done to make it possible for us to open again. Well, you know, aside from, you know, the straight business end of it, fact is that the Polynesian Cultural Center, its middle name is culture. And it's all the more important these days to have a place where culture lives and Hawaii culture can be expressed to people locally and who come here. And the Luau, I remember a day, you guys are too young, when there was, you know, these Luau's all over the place. Every hotel had a Luau. Everybody, everybody. Now, you know, I, I can't think of a regular Luau of any size, you know, that, that comes close to what you've been doing, what you are now going to resume doing at the Polynesian Cultural Center. You are the cradle of that element of the, what do you want to call it, the Hapa Holi days, remember Hapa Holi music, the days of Webley Edwards and Waikiki and the days when Hawaii became famous around the world for offering this kind of, you know, tourist delight. And the Luau, to me, is a very important thing that you offer. And, you know, I hope it comes back roaring like the other elements of your restaurant business. Well, thank you. Thank you. We hope so too. We take very seriously that charge to be that cradle of culture, a bastion of where we preserve that culture here on the island and the Hapa Holi side of it, in part at the Luau. And we preserve that period of time in Hawaiian history, but also the more pure periods of Polynesian cultural history that we've strived to preserve. And we think Onipa really helps take that to the next level where it's not, you, I promise you, you will not see a cellophane skirt anywhere on that stage. It tells a serious story about a wonderful human being and who did a lot for her people. And so it's a moving, touching experience, I believe. And an important part of our history, we don't want to lose. On the other hand, then you could go to the night show and there's a lot of fun and a lot of fire and a lot of culturally rich, authentically accurate presentations there woven together in a way that I think is also moving, but fun and a little lighter at times. Very valuable. Very valuable. Looking forward to getting out there. Now that the traffic's not as heavy. Well, now you've had your second shot. You have no reason to not come. I have to let it settle in. I have to develop my antibodies, right? Okay. All right. We'll see you next week. Okay. All right. Cheryl, can you, as you always do, can you summarize and try to pull all this together for our viewing audience? It's like Eric said, you know, our chairman is Greg Maples, who is the director of restaurant services at the Polynesian Cultural Center. And with his leadership, that's how the Hawaii Restaurant Association has worked with our local Department of Health and, of course, using the CDC and FDA guidelines. So that's the protocol, the six foot distancing, the face mask, the extra sanitizing. So while our visitor count is still low, this is a great opportunity for our locals to visit and enjoy the Polynesian Cultural Center and their famous Ali'i Luau. Our Hawaii restaurants and Luau's are open and ready to serve you. The Hawaii Restaurant Association is the voice of Hawaii's restaurant and food service industry. And we're looking forward to dining together again and creating more delicious memories. Delicious memories. I hear that, Eric. That's great. This has really been very interesting to learn about the Polynesian Cultural Center. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thank you, Cheryl, for setting it up. Always appreciate it. Aloha, you guys.