#Why early-bird dining is here to stay

The Big Apple may be losing its rep as the city that never sleeps thanks to the throngs of New Yorkers who have decided to stick with the early-bird dining habits they developed in the dark days of the coronavirus pandemic.

Take Jennifer Leuzzi, a food writer and personal trainer. She recently planned a night out with a friend at Keith McNally’s Pastis in Manhattan’s Meatpacking district for 5 p.m. sharp. The place was packed.

“It was completely full inside and out” the Chelsea resident said.

Last year’s mass shutdowns forced Americans like Leuzzi to live more simply because there was often frighteningly little to do after work but to go find some grub and then head back home.

Now, many people are reluctant to give that up even as taboos lift on activities like going to the movies or the salon. And it’s driving restaurateurs crazy.

“It’s not good for business,” said Joey Campanaro, the chef and co-owner of Little Owl restaurant in the West Village — the site of the fictional Central Perk Coffee Shop on “Friends.”

The problem, Campanaro says, is that the new wave of early birds like to linger.

“The 6 p.m. crowd is looking for a drink and to hang out, and then they stay, which is not great for business,” Campanaro said.

“If 8 p.m. is the popular hour for reservations, then I have a better opportunity — with an hour and a half turnover per table — to get two seatings in before 8 p.m.,” Campanaro said. “Those multiple table turns are essential for business.”

“I’m not discouraging people from coming at 6 p.m.,” Campanaro added. “We welcome people — those with reservations and the walk-ins. But it’s definitely a tricky thing.”

For Leuzzi, the shift started last winter when indoor dining was banned and people who wanted to avoid freezing their tuchuses off were forced to start eating before the sun went down. She’s maintained the habit, she says, because she likes it.

“When making plans with friends, we talk about late lunch or early dinner. There’s something nice, almost luxurious, about being home earlier at night, with more time to digest and get to sleep at a decent hour.”

Prior to March 2020, “a Friday night would be 8 o’clock dinner reservation with a drink at the bar beforehand,” Leuzzi said. “We would all be coming from work, or other things. It would have been impossible to get together earlier.”

It’s a major shift from the not too distant past when only elderly people and those towing kids dared step inside a restaurant before 8 p.m. That left restaurants with two or even three waves of customers: the early birds, the prime-timers and the late-nighters.

Now, frustrated restaurateurs say, everyone seems to want to eat between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.

“Six p.m. is the new 8 p.m.,” said Rick Camac, the director of operations at Tribeca’s Kitchen.

The Church Street diner was packed on a recent night at 6 p.m. — and the crowd included a top hospitality exec and his son. But by 9 p.m., “the place was completely empty,” Camac said. “We hung out until 11 p.m., But it was just us and the staff. That leads to staff morale issues and all sorts of problems.”

“Honestly, it is happening across the board,” said Camac, whose eatery was crawling with night owls before the pandemic. “People are coming earlier everywhere, at the same time, and leaving at the same time. In Tribeca, every place you see is empty by 8:30 p.m. or 9 p.m. We’ve gotten used to starting earlier. It’s all changed since the pandemic. I can’t think of a place where this isn’t happening.”

Robert Guarino, co-owner of Marseille in Hell’s Kitchen, says he finds that the work-from-home trend is a major factor in the popularity of early dining.

“If you are working in your apartment all day, it’s like the bell rings at 5 p.m. and you are ready to go out,” Guarino said. “The pandemic has done so much to shift people’s behavior.”

A renewed focus on health may also be playing a role.

“I’m not a health nut, but my acupuncturist says people aren’t eating during the day because of intermittent fasting,” Campanaro said. “Living through the pandemic, we have learned to have a healthier lifestyle, and I’m all for it.”

And as a trainer, Leuzzi has observed that lots of people are clinging to the less chaotic schedules they adopted during the pandemic.

“People’s schedules have generally become more consistent day-to-day, without the extreme swings from the work week to the weekend,” she said.

The question now is whether the old patterns will rear up again when people start returning to their offices in droves in September.

Camac thinks they will.

“This is a problem until we shift our dining patterns back, which I believe we will do over time,” Camac said. “We acted in a different way for a year and a half. That’s a long time.