Before the state mandated them to, Arley Marks and his business partners made the decision to close Honey’s on March 15, 2020 with these words for the community. About two weeks later, they reopened for delivery only and focused on the bottle inventory of the adjacent Enlightenment Wines Meadery, for which Honey’s is a tasting room, among many other delightful things. Tips from the deliveries went to a loan for furloughed staff that would be forgiven.

“Once we saw that people were supporting us, we started to buy more,” which is when they reintroduced a full wine list, along with bottled cocktails and PPE to purchase or donate. Eventually the kitchen was able to offer a small menu for to-go service, then outdoor seating (secured with concrete) for hot pot under infrared lights through the winter.

We sat down at our respective locations to talk about the decisions made over the last year, what Arley hopes for with Intro. 2233, and what’s next for Honey’s. 

Honey’s was the only place I saw that wasn’t building their outdoor structures with wood. 

My landlord owns property nearby where they had a concrete retaining wall. I asked if I could borrow some [blocks] and he said, yeah. So those are borrowed and we’ll be returning them. Then there’s a concrete place another 100 feet from there, where I was able to buy some very cheaply. When a concrete truck returns back to their home base and they have extra concrete, they dump the concrete into molds. Then they stack them up and they sell them. They were selling these for $20 a block. My landlord has a forklift, which I know how to use, so I moved them that way and set them in place. The cool thing was, you’re only supposed to be eight feet from the curb and the block is exactly six by two. We had one block going perpendicular to the curb, so that’s six feet. Then we have another block going parallel to the curb, so another six plus two, for exactly eight feet. 

The rest [of the outdoor structure] was done for rain. But we decided to never close the sides. We just had so much air flow. Actually, there’s a good story about the heaters. 

I would love to hear the heater story. 

When winter was approaching and everyone was open for outdoor dining, you could not buy a heater. They were sold out everywhere. So I did a bunch of research for what we really needed for our situation. We didn’t need to heat the entire space. We just needed to heat people. There’s a specific kind of heater [infrared] that heats surfaces and doesn’t move large quantities of air around, so it would heat your skin and the tabletop. But they were sold out too, so I downloaded the technical specs and I found the manufacturer in the UK. They actually were able to FedEx them to us, and we got them in another week and a half.

We also saved a lot of money that way. If you use heaters with propane tanks, the gas burns out in a day of running it and it costs $19.95 to replace. For the amount of space we have, we would have needed ten heaters. That’s a lot of money. But it worked out that we could run eight heaters, all at once, for $40 a night.

Then the city came out with regulations for wooden structures, and you got a cease and desist for the concrete. 

I think in the beginning there weren’t really too many guidelines, and I don’t think there were restaurants involved in guiding too many of the regulations. DOT [Department of Transportation] came and said, you can’t use this. I explained what we were doing, that we did this for a reason. It’s safer. It’s temporary. And it doesn’t create waste. I don’t remember who connected me with SBS [Small Business Services] but they had a close relationship with DOT at the time. I told them about our situation and they said, keep us bcc’d with the city. We got it approved in a matter of days after that.  

As soon as the kitchen was up and running, you were also delivering meals to hospitals. 

We were able to deliver about 5,000 meals in total. Leanne Tran, Raina Robinson, and Moonui Choi were behind this effort. We were serving a couple hospitals, and then we started going to community gardens that were organizing relief. When they left Honey’s, that program became permanent. They started a non-profit, Cafe Forsaken, which Moonui Choi had started before Honey’s, but then they banded together. 

What made you decide to focus on hot pot?

Well, it was pretty simple. As it was starting to get cold, we needed to serve hot food outside and it needed to be pandemic friendly. Hot pot is boiling liquid, so that would kill any virus. Everyone uses their own tongs to reach into the pot and move cooked food to their plates, then they use chopsticks to get food from the plate to their mouths. I love hot pot. I live in Chinatown and when it got cold, I was eating hot pot almost every day with friends. I brought the idea to our kitchen staff and they got really excited about it. We had people out here when it was 20-below. But we were also able to offer it for delivery. We had hot pot ranges and gas canisters that people could rent and we delivered them. We delivered so many hot pots. 

How would you change the relationship with the DOH? 

I think what’s frustrating is the way they handle curing and fermentation preparations, things that have basically been around for… ever. All of these preservation techniques that have been proven to be really effective and actually delicious. Things you can do according to the Department of Ag and Markets, at places like your butcher shop, but you can’t have active cultures in a restaurant. We need a DOH that is just more realistic with the way restaurants operate. There are places where staff are trained to throw things away when an inspector shows up. It’s so wasteful and also, why are we doing this? It just needs to be realistic, not blindly idealistic. 

What’s next for Honey’s?

We’ve been approved for Open Streets for 2021, so we’re super excited about that. I hope that’s here to stay. Restaurants operate on razor thin margins, so to be able to double your sales with your outdoor space, especially after this year, is huge. Especially with places trying to offer better pay for their staff, I think this is a way to shore up those efforts. Not everyone has this space to work with, of course, but I think it will be interesting to see where people move and how rents change, how the value of frontage changes. I do think we’re coming out of the pandemic dining for the better.

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Arley Marks is co-owner of Honey’s (93 Scott Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11237), a bar and tasting room for Enlightenment Wines Meadery. Enlightenment Wines mead is available for local delivery through Honey’s or shipping nationwide.