Queens restauranters Michael Duncan and Annette Runice have fun the fifth anniversary of their JFK primarily based restaurant J&P Runway Cafe with QBP Richards.
Courtesy of the PANYNJ
Two Queens restaurant house owners celebrated the fifth anniversary of their restaurant situated at JFK Airport.
Michael Duncan and Annette Runice celebrated the anniversary of the J&P Runway Cafe throughout Nationwide Small Enterprise Week on Could eighth. They have been joined by the Queens Borough President and different elected officers to mark the most important milestone.
Duncan owns and operates the Jamaica Breeze restaurant chain, Queens-based self-serve buffet-style eating places serving fashionable Jamaican breakfast, lunch, and dinner dishes. Runice is the franchisee proprietor of a Golden Krust restaurant situated in Queens Village and a standalone restaurant, Pa-Nash Restaurant in Rosedale.
Situated within the on-site worker cafeteria inside JFK’s Constructing 14, J&P Runway Cafe caters to a big viewers of airport employees. Cafe choices embrace genuine Caribbean meals, brick-oven pizza, pasta, and freshly grilled dishes.
The minority-and-woman-owned-business(MWBE) was chosen to function the cafeteria in 2020 following a aggressive concessions choice course of led by the PANYJ. “Annette and her accomplice, Michael, actually stood out,” stated Hersh Parekh, deputy chief of intergovernmental affairs for PANYNJ. “They submitted the strongest bid. They’d one of the best response, one of the best idea, one of the best venue, one of the best staffing plan, one of the best pricing, and so forth.”
Runice mirrored on the previous 5 years, saying that she and her enterprise accomplice have been happy with J&P Runway Cafe’s success regardless of the challenges they confronted through the COVID-19 pandemic.
The duo had obtained information that they received the allow to function the restaurant in early 2020, proper earlier than the pandemic began. Runice credit the survival of J&P Runway Cafe to the collaboration between her and Duncan. “ If it have been simply me alone, though I’ve prior companies, I don’t assume I might’ve been capable of make it by way of. With this collaboration with Mike Duncan and his background and expertise, each of us collectively, we have been capable of sail all of the tough seas, and be right here 5 years later,” she stated.
One of many largest hurdles the restaurant confronted was the lack of clients, as practically half of the 600-800 Port Authority employees who visited the cafe have been now not working in individual through the peak of the pandemic. Runice stated she and her enterprise accomplice leaned on their current buyer bases from their different eating places to assist get them by way of the unsteady time. “ In order that’s why we have now to have fun 5 years. Simply with the ability to keep alive and afloat was a problem,” she stated.
Runice stated she was impressed to bid for the restaurant alternative, to indicate different Southeast Queens enterprise house owners that they’ll efficiently function in JFK Airport.“ Each of us are immigrants from Jamaica, and we at the moment are US residents. We needed to carry some variety to the menu and it’s been effectively embraced,” she stated. “They actually love the Caribbean taste, and we simply have a various menu right here,” she stated. “ Lots of the employees are Caribbean. I might say you’re speaking about perhaps 70% of the employees…so I assume that’s why, , the gross sales of the Caribbean meals are highest,” Runice added.
Parekh added that the success of J&P Runway Cafe is only one instance of PANYNJ’s dedication to increasing the pool of certified and succesful MWBEs at JFK. He added that having companies owned by Queens residents helps showcase the distinctive meals tradition of Queens and past.
”We would like individuals to know that while you come to JFK, you’re in New York, you’re in Queens, you’re in Southeast Queens,” he stated. “We have now to ensure that the meals that’s served, the merchandise which can be offered, , on the administrative constructing, for instance, and even on the terminals or elsewhere on the airport, we replicate that very distinctive New York sense of place.”
“ We encourage all companies, massive and small, to achieve out to us, to work with us, and see how they’ll turn out to be a part of the work we’re doing throughout the area,” Parekh added.
