 Aloha and welcome to Hawaii Together. I'm Joe Kent, Executive Vice President of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, filling in for Kaylee Iaquina. He's the President and CEO of the Institute. And on Oahu, a new rule allows restaurants and bars to operate under full capacity, but they can only allow guests who have taken their vaccine for COVID-19. So how is this new rule and other lockdown rules? How have these lockdown rules affected Oahu restaurants and bars? Well, today we're talking with Bill Comerford. He's the President of the Hawaii Bar Owners Association, and he owned four Irish-themed bars before the COVID-19 lockdowns. Kelly O'Neill's, Irish Rose Saloon, Anna O'Brien's, and O'Toole. Welcome, Bill. Good afternoon, Joe, how are you? Good, and so nice to have you on the program. Now, I should first ask about your background, but I wanna talk about these bars, first of all. So you had these four bars, and are they still in business? No, they're all gone, well. I can't honestly say that in good conscience because they're not in my operations anymore. They're beyond me. In other words, I was forced to sell two of them for pennies on the dollar. That would be Kelly O'Neill's and O'Toole's. The landlords around January are forced us to say, hey, you have to open in some way or another. Otherwise, I have to rent it out to somebody else. The other two operations, which were Anna O'Brien's and the Irish Rose Saloon, both had expiring leases in September. And with the conditions that the Mayor called well and Governor Miquette put in place, there was no reason to renew those leases. Obviously, you could pay rent and never be old. So we, and a lot of other bar owners are in your position too. A lot of bars have gone out of business. So first, I'm very sorry to hear that. But I do wanna go back and just talk about you and your background and what inspired you to even get involved in this business. Well, it's a funny circumstance, but I was raised in Connecticut in Rhode Island, spent all my school year through in Connecticut and spent all my summers in Rhode Island. At the beach at a place called Matunik. And I was raised there every summer, surfing and all that, which actually brought me out here. But the matter was that when I was 12 years old, my dad said, hey, you're working. I said, where? He says across the street. And where's that at the bar? I was 12 years old, I'm working every day. I was sweeping out the bar, being in the bathrooms and picking up all the items on the beach. And I laughed because I was paid $20 a week back in 1964 for that. It was a different time and place, but that's what got me into the business. And though I was a history major in college, I couldn't find myself to be a teacher. So I stepped aside into restaurant management, founded across the country, Key West, Florida, Connecticut. And of course, I came out here and chose to be in the position of being a bartender, I suppose to be the owner of the management. I see. Good, it's been a good time for me. That's great. And I know a lot of people in the community really love the bars that you started. And what do you think, first of all, the bars mean to the community, your bars? Well, I'm guilty of one thing, that's why I'm closed. I'm guilty of the fact that I gather people. I gather people together. I do things that, you know, live music and dancing every night. Every bar is actually a community living room. People gather to meet their friends there. They have a place that they can meet, they can talk and go home. And then spend something that I've done. And it's something I've really enjoyed. And I like the Irish community. I've also been involved with friends of St. Patrick, who was the president of the organization, turned it around from a, how would I say, a group that was about to step into the grave and turn it around and turn into an operating operation. That's a club, that's a society that people like to meet. And once again, we do the St. Patrick's Day Parade, the big rock party downtown. You could Celtic Days of Honolulu, which both married Caldwell and covered an E-Gate signed up on for five to six years, where we had two months of Celtic events that we brought off-trend concerts, everything, so. And St. Patrick's Day in 2020 was quite an event, I believe that was around the time that the first big lockdown order came down. Do you remember that time and how did that go? That was the last day of real business that we did in everything. And of course, at that time, they said, we're gonna close you. And they hadn't made up their mind whether they were closing us. They canceled the parade. They canceled the block party downtown. And we were just looking at, can we survive this? So hold on one second, I hear something here. Just hear something I have to turn down. Okay, well, while he goes and fixes that, I do want to move our attention to today. And in today's new rules, Honolulu bars and restaurants can operate under limited capacity. But if they wanna operate under full capacity, they can do so as long as they only allow customers that have been vaccinated. So what are bar owners and restaurants saying about this? I think they're mostly perplexed. What can we do? In other words, government once again has taken a rule and in an effort to try to say, okay, we'll throw you some crumbs. You figure it out. Because it's got a lot of questions to this. I mean, there's civil rights questions. There's employee questions. There's customer questions. There's compliance questions. Would you, will you be fined or sued for something you do? Nobody knows. It's just, they throw us a bone and said, hey, you can figure it out, go do it. And what are, are there concerns about what customers may, or on social media, what they may see, you know, talk about with the bar? If you allow certain customers and disallow other customers, are there concerns about what customers might say? I think anybody in the business is just trying to find a way to be open. And that's the key, because quite honestly, the mayor called well and he never gave us a chance to survive. And last year, they closed us on March, March 18. Said we'll be closed for two weeks. We were closed until June 19th. They let us come back just to renew our liquor licenses because every, every license has to be renewed on June 30th. So we renewed our liquor licenses and then they closed us on July 3rd. And they said, we'll close you for three weeks while we train those liquor inspectors. That long three weeks lasted all the way until March 13th of 2021. I don't think that's three weeks. I don't think they can tell time. So anyways, they closed us and there was no means to survive. We had no funds from the CARES Act. We had no funds from, how do I say, the PPP. And our PPP last April and again this April, that's a full year apart. So you're saying that many bar owners, you did receive some aid. I'm sorry, you did receive what? Some, some federal or state aid. But what we did, well, the first PPP was understandable. But I was gone by June 30th of the last year. And the last dollar of sales I had was on July 30th when Paul both closed us for three weeks. In other words, I had no income at all from July 30th until I received the PPP in the late April of this year. I couldn't keep, if I had money, I would have been able to possibly keep two more bars because I would have had some means, but I had no means to pay any rent or pay any background or do anything. Now, have other bars also been in your position in this position too? Very much so, very much so. We have people who've been in the business for 20 and 30 years with their, they've been my age, I'm 68 years old. I'll be 69 in October. I'm at the age of retirement. And what they were forced to do is take their retirement funds and try to preserve their business. That's crazy. I mean, if it fails or it closes, now you don't even have any money for retirement. That's the position I've been in, you know. And it was very, very serious. I applied for what was called the shuttered venues grant or went through the process of that. But if you applied for that, you could not get, you could not apply for the PPP at the same time. So you have no funding. And they extended it for supposed to be early January and never got approved until sometime in May. And then they said, okay, in late March, they said, well, you can apply for PPP now. Also, I had the CARES Act, I had some CARES Act money from the city and county, but the city and county had, I had the bad experience of saying, go pay your bills and we'll reimburse you. I only had $150,000 EID alone and with that EID alone, I paid $100,000 in bills and they decided to give me $20,000 for it. I said, that's not what you said you'd do. You said you would reimburse our bills and you didn't. So the money was, I mean, money out of them until after, when they had the closure of the CARES Act, they gave them some funds at that stage, you know. Now the money was a little bit too little too late, you might say. Well, here's the point, it was not income. You paid your bills and they said, we'll reimburse you if you pay your bills. I said, this is still not income. There's no means to go forward with it. All you're doing is paying off past debt. Now, did you see some, let's say unfairness or unequal treatment between bars and other establishments during the lockdowns? Very much so. I mean, Maricopa made up his rules as he went along. There's no such rule or law in the, how they say in Honolulu liquor law or state liquor law, I should say in Honolulu city and county rules for the liquor commission. He made them up as he went along. He called about nightclubs. There's no such thing as a nightclub in Hawaii. There's cabarets, different licensing. So he was going based on what people were saying on the mainland as opposed to what was happening here. And he never had a conversation with anybody in the industry to properly discuss it. He just made it up as he went along. And I had a food establishment permit. I had the passing grade for the green part that you have on the windows for all of my farms. And then I opened up and sold hot dogs. He says, you can't do that. You have to sell 30% for something he made up. Oh, I see, I see. So even though I could serve food, I was very much targeted by the mayor. And he said, well, we're gonna get you out of here. And so he did get, they closed us. And anybody that had no kitchen at that point was put to death. Your business is going down. If you don't have a kitchen. What about people who say, yes, but we need people to be safe and there are rules for allowing restaurants and bars to operate at least somewhat. And eventually we'll get there, but we just need to wait it out. And what about these types of thoughts? I think if you take a look at it, and this was part of the conflict of what Mayor Caldwell did was, and he decided what bars were. And right immediately, he had two or three different cases where bars that he decided were restaurants because they had a kitchen, had COVID cases. So now he started calling the bar again. After he decided they were restaurants because they had kitchens. So it was his, once again, his determination. What happened with us is that we had a, I should say an anonymous complaint against our bar and our neighbor next to us, where a gentleman came in would not get his temperature taken, wouldn't wear a mask, wouldn't observe the six foot distancing. So we told him we had to leave. In doing so, apparently he made a complaint. Now I've never seen the source of the complaint. Never seen the complaint even though I requested it. But I had health inspectors, liquor inspectors, and police officers in my bar for two weeks straight. And all of them said, you guys are doing a great job. You're doing a better job than anybody else I see out there. What was the rationale? What was the rationale that bars had different rules than restaurants before? Was it just totally arbitrary or was there at least some theoretical rationale? Within the rules of the liquor commission, you can have a general dispenser license. My bars are most, I have three bars of the general dispenser licenses. And they have the ability to have, what was it, live entertainment and dance. So you can have music and you can have live dance. So it's still the same kind of licenses, general dispenser license. You have general dispenser license say that you're gonna have at least 30% food and you're taxed on a different level. And on that basis, you would still have a general dispenser license and it would be called a restaurant license, but you had to do 30% plus more in food or pay a penalty if you did less than that. So this is something that the mayor kind of made up as he went along. I see. Right? So it has some semblance of how would I say that you're looking at the rules and seeing something, but you're not reading the rules. You're just picking things out of the rules to make it your way. What about also this rule that restaurants, bars and social establishments are only allowed to serve alcohol before midnight and they can't serve it after midnight, the sort of alcohol curfew rule. Did that hurt your business too? Very much so. Because remember, it only went to midnight in what we say, March 13th of this year when Mayor Blanchiardi made that move. Prior to that, we were closed at 10 o'clock. You'd only served at 10 o'clock. So let me give you an example. Kelly O'Neill's, right? Right now is open as much as they can possibly be. They're a four o'clock license, they're a cap rate license. Most of my business was always done between 11 o'clock at night and three o'clock in the morning. I could do more in those hours than I would do in a bar, other bar for the whole week. And what happens is they deny that process. You don't have the entertainment. You have a restriction of capacity. You have restrictions of hours. And what's that mean? Where you're paying rent of close to $25,000 a month. You have to do some sales. And you can't do those sales, because you're limited. So currently, they're probably doing maybe a 45, 40 to 50% of what they would normally do in sales right there with the loss of hours and the minimum capacities that they're allowed. I see. So now do you think that bars right now, even under these 50% capacity and the current limitations and everything, can bars operate safely? Yes. If the restaurants are operating safely, bars can too. But we have to say something here and I apologize for this, but you know what? We were committed of one thing. All of our bars were put out of business primarily because they had the potential to gather people. Not that they were gathering people. They had the potential to do that. And they had a hearing between your health administrators, your government administrators and the mayor and you had to decide what you're gonna do. And those people said, you know what? Let me ask you this, Joe. I'm gonna guess that you're probably a nine to five guy, aren't you? And guess what? All those people are nine to five people. In their world, they say nobody should be out at midnight. Nothing good happens after midnight. But they don't realize that. Who works to midnight? Hospital workers, the ambulance drivers, the police, everybody in hotels and restaurants, they're all working to midnight or to closing time. And when they get off work, what do they wanna do? They wanna have a drink. Well, we're gonna come back after this break. Take a short break and we'll be back with Bill to talk more about the rules. So stay with us. I'm Mitch Ewan, host of Hawaii, the state of clean energy of Think Tech Hawaii. Hawaii, the state of clean energy is about following the many clean energy initiatives in Hawaii. Hawaii, the state of clean energy appears weekly on Think Tech Hawaii at 4 p.m. on Wednesdays. Thank you so much for watching our show. We'll see you then. Aloha. Aloha again and welcome to Hawaii Together. I'm Joe Kent, filling in for Kaili Iakina with the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. And today we're talking about bars in Honolulu and the new rules and the old rules and all of the bars that have shut down. Now I've talked to many bar owners who have been shut down. Some have left to the mainland and many have struggles under the rules that have basically said that bars cannot open for certain times of the day or under certain restrictions. So today we have Bill Cumberford and he's the owner of four Irish themed bars. So welcome back, Bill. The past owner of four. Past owner, I should say. Can I ask you, do you have plans to open any of the bars again? I've been approached by a one-man lord and the property that was gone, the lease was expired last September and somebody else took over the property, offered us a lease because of the fact that we have, oh, they said we have the liquor license still in place. Liquor license lasts the whole year and you have to have a million dollars of policy for insurance for it. So it was very costly. But he asked me to come back and I'm looking at it and I said, if I get that one money I will. That's what I'm doing now. I've also been approached maybe over animal violence in that data with homeless. The whole park across the street in Moili is a campground for the homeless. It's not a good prospect to try to go open and open. So the bar that you're thinking of opening is the Irish Rose Saloon, a reopening. Yes, yes. Is that right? Yeah, county in the road, yeah. I see. And is that the one that you started with in Honolulu? Well, we did. We started actually on Lover Street. We had 227 Lover Street. It's where we originally originated. And it was owned by Elaine and Jim. And that's why we have a corporation known as E&J Long Company. They were the principals in that organization. And they retired around 1998 and that's when we took over. So that's why we did it. We actually applied over at the Island County. That's how we formed the Hawaii Bar Owners Association because I was denied the license there and actually went forward to the state Supreme Court in one. We reopened the license, but it was not possible. What do you think about your prospects for reopening? I mean, we're still under many rules and still questions about whether we can reach as the right percentage of vaccines in Honolulu and Hawaii to reopen everything. So what is your prospects for the future? I'm very minimal. I would say the prospects of being successful are virtually small because of the fact that I'm gonna pay high rents. I could pay my employees if I can get them back. It's been a hard time trying to get employees back. I could pay my rents, which are gonna be high for the landlord's sake. And I can pay my taxes for government. It's pretty much ignored us in the situation. I've been taxed very heavily and had zero representation. So coming back to all this, I said, why would I stay? And the only reason I'm gonna stay is because I got a federal grant that I'm allowed to pay off my debt. So I'll pay off my debt and have very little chance of going forward. The bars will not probably be in a very profitable position, but it'll give me the means to try to pay off my past debt and try to move forward. And I had an interesting question upon receiving this. I asked the head of the SBA in the region that said, can I take this grant with me to a place that's open? And he said, yes, you can. It's not limited to what? So I could take the whole grant and move to somewhere else and actually start a whole new business all over. Do you find that other bar owners are doing that? I don't think anybody got, I would have to think very few qualified for this grant. I see, I see. I think very few qualified for it. I have some friends that I know got the shuttered venues grant and have been able to reopen because of that. And that had some very, how do I say, mystifying rules. I had live music every night and all my bars, but I didn't have a cover charge all the time. So I didn't qualify. I didn't have a fixed seating like a theater or a lounge seat. So I didn't qualify for that. But the money is a long time. Even if we move to tier, well, we are in tier five, but if we operate under the social establishment rules, let's say that lots of people get vaccinated and we, you know, bar owners, restaurants decide to check to see only allow those guests that have been vaccinated and so on. So they can operate at full capacity. But bars would still not be able to open or serve alcohol after midnight though. And there's still questions about musicians and so on, right? So it's, and the rules themselves are confusing. And then you have tourists coming from the mainland who may or may not be vaccinated and so on. So we're not out of the woods yet, even under the best of... Not by any means. Quite honestly, you know, when we were in the tier system, I told people that bars were in tier five. They said, there's no tier five. I said, be tier four. Because when you get to tier four and you get to the bars, it said TBD, to be determined. We're still in that place. I'm going to tell you right now, bars are in tier 13. They're in tier 13. We're the first to be closed, last real. Why? Because the government is totally prejudicing against us. They are. They love the taxes. They love the taxes because they get a huge... They make more money on every beer sold than I could possibly. I make a five to 10 cents on a $5 beer. They're probably going to make a $1.25. So it goes that way. But I don't think that the governor will ever release his powers until he leaves office. My grant lasts until March of 2023. He'll leave office in January of 2020. Will we ever open? I have said my air quality never opens. Have you talked to Mayor Blanchiardi at all? About any suggestions? I have talked to Mr. Blanchiardi and I have great appreciation for him. I've also talked with Lieutenant Governor Josh Green and I have appreciation for him because I feel he's done his job for what it's done. But I can honestly say it's been a year and a half now almost since they closed this in March of 2020. The governor's office has never replied to a single phone call, a single email, a single letter or anything to us to have a meeting ever. Ever. When I called them out two weeks ago before I signed a new lease, I said, I want to know what the rules are going to be. They said, well, I said, I'd like to talk to somebody in their office if you cannot. They said, you could write to the governor. I said, you need, by the website? Like I just, like I have 30 to 40 times and they hung up on it. I see, it's hard to get through. It's hard to get the time of day, you might say, right. Well, what about, I'm going back to, before we leave the vaccine rules and everything. Is your position on that that, well, we just kind of, if it's the only way to make it work, then let's do it. Or is there another way to view this? No, I do see that's the only way they're going to let you open. But even still, if they're going to let you open, let you, please open the hours that we have to, that we pay for. The full hours. I paid for three liquor licenses I hadn't been able to use. That's crazy. You know? I mean, the governor makes the rules. It's a law. It's as good as a law. And he won't talk to anybody. Basically what they have done is they chose to ignore us. They sent us to death without due process, without a hearing, without any conversation, without accepting any phone calls and chose for us to ignore you to death. And they still ignore us to death. Well, Bill, is there any other final thoughts that you have? I know you have a lot of thoughts about this and passion at once. Well, I'm thankful that I've reached, I want to thank our Mr. Case's office for helping us to get through this grant book. Because it was, without that, I would be totally a million dollars in debt and crying myself to sleep every night. But fortunately, I've relieved my debt through this process. Whether I can create a successful business to sell or operate is questionable. At least I've relieved my debt and that's huge. And can I help for one? Not like I used to. Because like I said, I still want to gather people. What is Oahu known as? It's the gathering place. What did I do? I gathered people. And that's my guilt, apparently. Well, thank you, Bill, for coming on the show and talking with us and thank you for everything you're doing and best wishes for your future ventures. I know it's very difficult, but best wishes nonetheless. And thanks for tuning in to Hawaii Together on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcasting Network. I'm Joe Kent, signing off.