From eliminating tipping to turning her dining room into Hunky Depot, Claire Sprouse is not waiting for anyone to tell her how to shift her hospitality. She continues to hold space for community engagement at Hunky Dory — from postcard drives on Tuesdays, to weekly pop-ups for guest cooks — while providing low-contact service, outside only. Pivot she has.

We stole some time, before she heads to SF to open her third baby, Buddy, to talk about what not returning to normal looks like.

How did you process the shutdown?

A light just went off. Oh, we should be involved in all these laws and rules that deeply impact our businesses and our workers. My focus last year was more about SLA, as well as raising the federal minimum wage, which is something particularly important to me. I’m trying to make decisions in my businesses that make space for that. 

I’m a hospitality person. I love running my businesses and being part of my community. At the same time, I really want to think about, what does policy look like? What does transformative change look like within our industry’s systems, so that we can have a more equitable industry and not just say it, as if it’s just magically going to happen. 

You are definitely showing that it’s possible, at least in your own space.

It’s hard. I definitely see a lot of things returning to normal and you can kind of see how people are so driven, for good reasons, to get back to normalcy. But yes, it is scary. I find it disheartening at the very least that some of these things might go to the wayside. I can even see it in real time, the way people engage with our business. 

How is your relationship with the DOH?

They’ve been having these educational [non-punitive] visits to get everyone more in line with regulations and give businesses an opportunity to fix things, so I don’t understand why that couldn’t be standard operating procedures. We should have open communication and a dialogue with our inspectors. More transparency.

I’ve experienced a lot of disconnect. There’s a lot of time wasted, getting one thing filled out, waiting in line over here, so that you can get a permit from over there, and vice versa. Obviously time is very valuable for small business owners, so it’s just another barrier to doing business in New York, and doing it in a sustainable way. 

You know who is helpful? NYC Small Business Services. 

How so?

They will send out a free compliance advisor who will give you a rundown on everything from DOH to DOT, everything. They really seem to be thoroughly knowledgeable on regulations for small businesses, and it seems like that would be really helpful in a PDF. Like, whatever their training is, they should make that available to the rest of us.

The health department also offers a compliance service, but they charge you something like $300. I think it’s really funny that two different city organizations are offering essentially the same service, and one is charging for it. And one is a lot more visible than the other. It’s just wild that [DOH] is charging businesses for something that is a public health and safety concern. 

Did you reach out to SBS when you were deciding how to reopen last year?

Well, they didn’t seem to have a lot of information [at the time] so I looked to other restauranteurs in the city that had resources to create best practices. That helped guide me more than the city’s agencies. It just felt like we were our best resources. We also had to go with our gut in a lot of ways, for what felt safe for our employees and the people we were serving. It’s a hard balance to prioritize public safety and also try to scrape together money to pay the bills. 

What’s next for Hunky Dory? Do any of the recent capacity announcements change anything for you? 

We’re going to stay with outdoor dining for as long as possible. We have a low-contact ordering system. We still have people order from QR codes. Our tables are still spaced out. We still ask people to put their masks up when workers come up to their tables, even though it’s all outdoors. In terms of capacity, I think we’re totally fine sticking with what we have going on right now, and it connects with everyone’s comfort levels. So we’re going to keep doing what we’ve been doing.

What do you use as your guide?

We get pushback a little bit but I think, even though the numbers are improving, there’s still almost 500 people who died in New York City last week. There’s a lot of people who aren’t vaccinated, and I don’t think it’s fair to assume who is or isn’t vaccinated. For the winter, we’re hoping that the numbers will be in line for us to move dining back indoors, and we’ll just go from there. But it feels impossible to plan. 

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Claire Sprouse is the owner of Hunky Dory (747 Franklin Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11238), where tax & tip is included.