Crushed by lockdowns, Nonna owner Simona Vasile puts up 'for sale' sign

Sunday, 14 March 2021

Simona Vasile, owner of the Nonna Italian restaurant in Newmarket.

Simona Vasile opened her Italian trattoria in Auckland’s Newmarket shopping hub on March 1 last year.

Now, she'll sell the business unless she can find a reliable chef to allow her to cut back the 70 hours a week she’s now working.

Lockdown after lockdown had drained her capital, Vasile said, and the pandemic cost her a chef, and a barista, both of whom headed overseas to go home to be with family.

Vasile, a mother of two, opened offering simple, affordable, Italian food cooked as an Italian nonna, or grandmother, would.

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“We were very successful from the beginning,” said Vasile, who is Romanian, but learned to cook in Italy.

“Most Italian restaurants fall into fine dining, but Nonna is a trattoria, family-style restaurant, really simple, less formal, lots of kids,” she said.

People who came once, generally came again, she said.

But then the country was put into lockdown on March 23, and everything came to a screeching halt.

Locked into a two-year lease on her trattoria, Vasile found the capital she set aside for her business dwindling.

At first, she was not stressed.

“We came back from that situation, and again, we were going well, but it’s not like you come out of lockdown and can recover immediately. We didn’t have an established clientele,” she said.

August saw Auckland move back into level 3 again, and then again in February.

“Every time we start making advertising, there is another lockdown,” she said.

She'd just finished delivering 5000 fliers when the February move to alert level 3 in Auckland was announced.

She signed Nonna up to food delivery platforms, but that did not replace the business lost from being closed to people wanting to eat on the premises.

Simona Vaile's trattoria Nonna is for sale.

She did not resent the lockdowns, which have come under increasing fire from Act party leader David Seymour, who has slammed the Government over the impact of its lockdown policy on business owners.

She said she understood they were about saving lives.

“I’m passionate about Nonna. That's what keeps me going.”

But she said: “We’ve used all our savings.”

The Covid-19 pandemic also seem to have resulted in a staff skills shortage in the hospitality industry going from bad to worse.

Nonna’s barista returned home to South Korea, and Vasille has struggled to replace one of her two chefs, leaving her working 70-hour weeks.

“Staff are really hard to find right now,” she said. “Probably a lot of people went back home.”

Celebrity chef Josh Emett has called for chefs to come back to New Zealand.

Vasile said she was a good employer, and paid good wages.

Restaurant Association spokeswoman Becky Erwood said members were reporting how hard it was to find staff.

“This is very much a legacy issue that has been exacerbated by Covid-19, which blocked access to migrant workers,” she said.

Businesses were unable to recruit chefs from overseas, and migrant workers and people on working holidays, who made up a portion of the hospitality industry workforce, were no longer coming to the country.

“It’s always been an issue, and it is particularly so now,” said Erwood.

She said Auckland restaurateur Josh Emett's plea on Instagram for New Zealand chefs overseas to come home had been in response to the issue.

“I’m really tired,” Vasile says.

But it’s more than the exhaustion she's suffering from. It’s guilt, especially about not spending enough time with her two sons, and her husband, who works in IT.

“When I’m home, I feel guilty about not working on the business, and when I’m there I feel guilty about not being with my family,” she says.

It's a far cry from where her business plan forecast she would be with the business established, and a professional manager running the place, allowing her to spend less time on the business, and more time with her family.

She continues to look for a chef, but her hope is dwindling, and she now hopes to sell the business to someone willing to take over the lease on the property.

“I’m not the only one in this situation. It's going to be a story across the whole city,” she says.