Trevioli set to open new riverfront spot after COVID-19 setbacks. Take a look inside.

After a six-month delay, a second Trevioli location is finally ready to open its doors on the ground floor of The Rapids, a $52 million luxury apartment building along the Chattahoochee River.

Co-owners Trevor Morris and Sanjay Choudhury are planning the restaurant’s grand opening for 5 p.m. Wednesday, when guests will be able to visit the newly completed (and socially distanced) dining room of Trevioli at The Rapids, taste the menu and hear live music at the adjacent Mat Swift Park.

Though the project has been over a year in the planning and construction process, timing has not been in the pair’s favor.

They expected to open their doors in February, but were sidelined waiting for their state alcohol license, which was further delayed when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S.

“The struggle was real before, now it’s certainly real,” Morris said. “I don’t know that you could pick a more difficult time to open a restaurant. It was already a difficult job to have ... but you can’t cook better than COVID, you can’t offer better service than COVID and it will affect you, it affects everybody.”

Coronavirus hit restaurant business hard

The restaurant at The Rapids is an offshoot of Trevioli Italian Kitchen on Blackmon Road, known for its handmade pasta and locally-sourced ingredients.

The Blackmon Road location has weathered the highs and lows of the pandemic, switching to mostly curbside and takeout.

With workers hired and waiting for the new restaurant to open, Morris and Choudhury felt they had no choice but to proceed even as new coronavirus cases continue to rise daily in Georgia.

Not only are sales fluctuating more than ever, but a situation that changes daily means planning for the future has been nearly impossible, Morris said.

“This has been a scary process,” he said. “Now we’re at the point where we don’t really have a choice, we have to open. We have loans, we have rent, we have all of this stuff in here, and we’re super excited to be here, but it’s just time.”

“It’s already been a year and alot of investment,” Choudhury said. “We have to take a risk and start.”

Morris said that a loan he received from the Paycheck Protection Program, a small business loan program approved by congress at the outset of the pandemic, created a bit of a dilemma when paired with the unemployment benefits his employees began to receive.

The funds had to be used mostly on payroll, and Morris had to retain a certain amount of staff to be eligible for loan forgiveness.

“Some of our staff has made more money on unemployment than working,” he explained. “So it was a little difficult to get them to come back to work. So part of the PPP and the unemployment worked against each other because you’ve got to retain that amount of employees, but no one wants to come back to work because they’re making more not working.”

Now that employment checks are beginning to taper off, Morris said he’s waiting on a large labor pool to open up.

“There are quite a few restaurants that have closed down and I’m getting applications from there,” he said. “I don’t want to take your employees; I want them to go back to you. But it’s nice to have this variety of people to choose from which wasn’t there before. It’s good and bad.”

Owners pin hopes on Riverfront Place build out

Despite the uncertain future, Choudhury and Morris said Trevioli at The Rapids is set up for success.

“We’ll be taking the precautions that we have to. All of the employees will be masked, and I’ve gotten rid of about 40% of my seating that’s brand new,” Morris said.

The two also said the restaurant should be a success due partly to its location in the three-phase W.C. Bradley Company development called Riverfront Place.

The apartment building was the first phase of the development, followed by Mat Swift Park. Currently, a $30 million, seven-story Hotel Indigo is being constructed just north of the apartments on the river, and phase three will be the development of land adjacent to the existing apartments and hotel.

In January, Pace Halter, president and COO of W.C. Bradley’s Real Estate Division, told the Ledger-Enquirer that phase three was still in the planning stages, but that it could break ground in 2020.

“The ultimate goal is we’ll have an office component, we hope which will have a ground floor grocery store,” he said. “We have a second multi-family component that will be very similar to The Rapids both in terms of look and feel but also size, so another 200-plus multifamily units. That will include street level retail also, along Broadway. And then the majority of that sits on top of a parking structure ... roughly 1,100 car parking structure.”

Choudhury said the clientele for The Rapids location will be very different from the bedroom community that surrounds the Blackmon Road location.

“This is more of a happening place and with the whitewater rafting, then all these apartments around us and hotels coming up like the Indigo, the AC Marriott and The Hampton ... that’s exciting,” he said.

Choudhury also said he hopes the city allows alcohol carryout up to the Hotel Indigo so that people can take beverages from the restaurant and go walk around downtown.

“I think we got in at the right time, even though it’s a difficult time, but I think we’ll be locked in down here and we’ll always have customers,” Morris said.

This story was originally published July 28, 2020 at 6:00 AM.