Do I miss Port Townsend? Yes. Am I opening it back up? Yes.”

Kassandra Swindler, owner of the Dusty Green Cafe

At 10 p.m. on a recent night in early August, Kassandra Swindler, the owner of the Dusty Green Cafe locations in Port Ludlow and Port Townsend, got a text message from the chef at her Port Townsend restaurant. They told her they were quitting, effective immediately. 

This presented a huge problem for Swindler. This was her only chef at the Port Townsend Golf Club location. The cafe was already running short on servers, and now they didn’t have a chef.

She didn’t open the restaurant that morning, and got busy posting job notices on every website she could think of — for both a line cook and servers.

“I expected to be flooded with applications,” she said, adding that many people are in need of work right now due to coronavirus-related layoffs.

Instead, she received one application for chef, and two or three for servers. 

With not enough applications coming in, Swindler was left with a choice. 

As the only chef at the Dusty Green’s new location at the Port Ludlow Golf Course, opened in July, Swindler had to pick a restaurant to cook at, and one to temporarily shut down while she searched for a chef. 

She looked at the numbers for her two branches, and the answer was clear: The Port Ludlow cafe was bringing in more money.

She announced the Port Townsend location’s temporary closure on Aug. 5. 

“I don’t have a line cook or enough servers to give the residents of Port Townsend and the visitors to the community the service that they deserve and that they expect,” Swindler said.

It was strictly a business decision, she said, with the emotional factor weighing heavy on her.

“It’s a very hard decision, it’s not one we can make lightly,” she said of the closure. “Our hearts are in Port Townsend; It’s our first space — it’s named after my dad.”

Swindler believes that the extra unemployment money being handed out during the pandemic is one of the root causes of the lack of job applications she’s receiving. 

“The extra unemployment assistance has made it really hard for not just myself but other business owners in the community, because we hear daily that ‘Hey, we can make more at home than at work.’ And so we can’t compete with that,” she said.

In addition, as a chef herself, she sympathizes with the plight of chefs who don’t wish to work in a kitchen with temperatures near 100 degrees for hours on end — all while wearing a mask — even though she supports the state’s mask mandate.

“I think it’s hard for them to willingly go into a working environment that is hazardous to your health due to high temperatures,” she said. “I think it’s not a healthy situation for anybody.”

As for the shortage in servers, Swindler said that she’s perplexed.

“I don’t know, I really don’t,” she said. “It’s a hard one. It kind of blows my mind. I didn’t expect it at all.” 

That shortage has been affecting the Port Ludlow branch as well, where Swindler said things are “tight.”

“We’re all working long hours and the best that we can,” she said. “We’re staffed enough to be able to make ends meet; we’re still understaffed in the overall big picture.” 

“It’s just a never-ending ‘How do I make ends meet?’ conversation that I have in my head daily, and that leads to inconsistent products and inconsistent menu items,” she added.

Another impact on her business from COVID-19 has been a shortage of kitchen supplies sold in bulk, especially related to takeout. Regional stores and retail websites have largely run out of biodegradable utensils and packaging, while prices have skyrocketed on disposable gloves and other products. She has had to purchase plastic items in bulk, which she said goes against the ideals of her and many of her customers.

“We’re not even remotely close to environmentally conscious service anymore,” she said.

Terry Berge, an employee at the Port Townsend Golf Club, said that the clubhouse has been very empty and quiet since the Dusty Green Cafe closed. The restaurant is popular among golfers, and he said that each day he gets calls from people asking if the cafe was reopening.

“I’m hoping she’s able to come back,” Berge said of Swindler. “I’m hoping she finds someone right away.”

Swindler said she is feeling optimistic about that happening.

“Do I miss Port Townsend? Yes,” she said. “Am I opening it back up? Yes.

“I had no intention of leaving and I have no intention of being gone.”