Quite possibly the biggest story of the holiday season, as it pertained to restaurants, was the temporary closure of one of Savannah’s historic and beloved seafood restaurants, Desposito’s Seafood in Thunderbolt.

The restaurant closed in early December after what has been described as a staff walk-out.  By the time they reached the end of the line, we are told some hadn’t been paid in weeks. Employees hadn’t even been able to collect gratuities.  No staff, no restaurant.  Which, not surprisingly, triggered the rumor mill to run amok.

We received several emails over December asking what was going on with the restaurant. Some people simply wanted to know why it was closed. Others had opinions and declarations that turned out to be just not true.

I spoke at length with a member of the Desposito’s Management team this week and tried to separate fact from social media fiction.  Megan Fisher is the Assistant Operations Manager for River Street Hospitality, Desposito’s parent company.

Megan shared some insight into the last half year of operations at Desposito’s, including a change in the management team and an ill-fated attempt to dramatically change operations at a large and busy restaurant on the fly.  It didn’t work.  Traffic dipped, numbers dipped and they fell behind on payroll. 

No one at Desposito’s will deny egregious mismanagement. Megan tells me that no one realized just how bad the issues were until their new management team got in there and try to make some changes.  From their seats, it was far easier said than done.

For the sake of clarity and transparency, we are sharing a transcript of a portion of the conversation I had with Megan Fisher. She tells me that they have navigated through this process and Desposito’s Seafood plans to re-open in the next week or so.

How did you get here?

Megan Fisher: A lot of people, including Michelle (former Managing Partner Michelle Smith) poured a lot of blood, sweat and tears into making Desposito’s something Savannah could be proud of. She just couldn’t do it anymore. So we planned to take over management of the restaurant.

And that takeover was harder than you thought it would be?

Megan Fisher: It was way too hard. It was more. This is the hardest thing that we have ever taken on.  Labor costs were out of control. Payroll was running $45,000 a week.  Sales were $32,000 a week.  Desposito’s slogan was ‘always fresh always local.’  There was nothing fresh, there was nothing local.

Numbers were going down. But I can say that wasn’t just Desposito’s.  That was everybody.

COVID saw a surge in numbers like no one had ever seen.  We saw this coming.   We’ve known the market was going to normalize back to what it should have been. We are seeing that now.  I talk to restaurants downtown who all say business is down this year.

So that was causing you issues with payroll?  

Megan Fisher: Absolutely, it was.    But we will be caught up with payroll as of (January 2nd).

So as of Friday January 2nd, everyone who worked before it was shut down, will be paid?

Megan: Yes. They will be paid.

So what is the plan going forward?

Megan: We have a select group of people that we have spoken to about building our new team. We have a new refined menu, really focusing on fresh local ingredients.  We are going to have a separate lunch and dinner menu.

We are not going to be, as we say, the ‘TGI Fridays of seafood.’  We are going to do a smaller amount, but we are going to do it really well.  Hopefully, return to being the heart of Thunderbolt.

At the end of the day, this was about stewardship of people, trust, and a community institution.  We paused to do it right, and we are reopening stronger because of it.

Fair enough, but the building remains for sale?

The building has never actually been for sale.  That was a rumor. People have made offers.

As in, after you closed, that phone started ringing?

Yes, of course.  But it’s not listed in MLS. It’s not listed with brokers. There is no sign in the yard. It is not listed.  And no one has made us an offer that we would be willing to sell it for.

Do you have a timetable for when you hope to be open?

We have a blood drive on Monday, the 5th, from 4:30 until 8 pm.  We will have our doors open if people want to stop by to see the new menus.  Try some food samples.  And we want to be able to give back to the community.  

Our goal-and we have to say this tentatively-because there are a lot of things that go into reopening a restaurant. But our goal is to re-open January 10th.

We have a lot of healing to try to do with the community and other people and other things as well. We don’t shy away from that.

We have plans moving forward where this will never happen with payroll again. Tips will be going directly to servers again. 

It sounds like you guys tried to take control of a car moving 100 miles per hour without pulling over, and you put it into a wall.

We didn’t realize how bad it was until we got in here. I knew she (Michelle Smith) wanted out. We didn’t realize why.

If I had realized how bad it was before we took over, I would have shut down for 30 days. But we didn’t, so here we are.  We’re going to right this. We are going to get back on the road.

Will any of the staff come back?

Everyone wants to come back. We are working through that now.

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