Joanne Chang and Christopher Myers are the wife-and-husband team behind the restuarans Myers + Chang and Flour Bakery. They joined Boston Public Radio for the first installment of a series on Boston area businesses reopening after more than a year of pandemic restrictions.

On emerging from winter as businesses begin to reopen across the city

"I'd say the state of our bakeries and restaurant is looking positive. It's optimistic," Chang said. "We're seeing a lot more people vaccinated — including our team. We've got more people coming through the doors at both the bakeries and the restaurant. In fact, it's to the point where, like every other restaurateur, we're starting to struggle with staff. We went through 10 months of not being able to staff everbody, and now everybody is looking for staff."

On expanding Flour Bakery during the pandemic

Myers said the team had been looking to expand before COVID-19 hit and took over a lease in a space formerly occupied by Au Bon Pain in the Charles River Plaza.

"We tried to get out of that lease during COVID," Myers said. "We'd already sunk a ton of money into it, but we still thought, this is probably just never going to get off the runway. MGH wasn't quite as amenable to that as we'd hoped they were, so we just stuck with it. And, believe it or not, it's the busiest Flour."

Chang said that area, near Mass General Hospital, means that "everyone is very keenly very aware of COVID, taking the right precaution and then living their life."

On the mental health impact of working through a pandemic

"This business is hard enough without a pandemic," Chang said. "You go in every day, people are working really hard [and] sometimes they feel underpaid or underappreciated. You do everything you can to try and create an environment they can thrive in."

The pandemic added an additional layer, said Chang — especially for many younger staff members who might be dealing for the first time with something that upends their lives.

"For a lot of our team members, this is really the first big thing to have happened, and they're freaking out," she said. "It's tough to see young people who are just shaken by everything ... On a positive note, it has been really inspiring just to see how resilient they are, despite their nervousness and all their worries."

Myers added that generally speaking, people who have stayed with the hospitality industry over the past year are "gifted" in many ways but are also "torched, emotionally." She said it's important for people to be patient and kind as they dine out with more regularity this spring.

Restaurants no longer have percentage capacity limits for indoor dining, though time restrictions are still in place for table service, and parties still cannot be larger than six people.

On vaccine hesitancy among staff

By the end of April, all adults in the state will be eligible to receive the vaccine. Restaurant workers have been eligible since March 22, but Chang said she has talked about vaccination with employees and decided not to impose a requirement at this point.

"I don't think we've decided to do a 'no shoes, no service; no vaccine, no service' approach yet," she said. "We have some Black team members who are honestly fearful of it. We have some team members who are young, and they say, 'I want to wait and see what happens for everyone else,'" she said.

Even as more people across the state become vaccinated, Chang said the return to indoor dining for Flour Bakery and Myers + Chang is still "in flux," with a hopeful start by early May.

On supporting the AAPI community amid a rise in anti-Asian violence

A mass shooting in Atlanta that killed six women of Asian descent and a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans have garnered media attention recently, but Chang said anti-Asian sentiment is nothing new.

"In talking to my parents, gosh they were so pragmatic about it," Chang said. "I hadn't really realized how much they had built a shell around themselves to protect them from people who were giving racist insults to them."

"I think that's typical of what a lot of Asians will say is just they've ignored it and let it try to roll past them," she added. "And I think now, with everything that's going on, they're realizing that's not helpful. They've got to speak up, and they've got to make other people aware that is happening and it's harming all of us — not just Asians but the entire community."

Myers and Chang both noted that even in February 2020, when much was known about COVID-19, Boston's Chinatown experienced an exodus of consumers and foot traffic.

"I have very little doubt that they have the spit and pluck to get through this, much like the restaurateurs of other ethnicities, but they have been hurt worse. There's no question about that," said Myers, who urged anyone with a yearning for Chinese food to order takeout from Chinatown businesses.

Chang said she was astonished people could believe, incorrectly, that eating Chinese food might transmit COVID-19.

"This idea of anti-Asian sentiment is something that we don't think about or talk about often," she said. "But it is there, and it does come out."