On Wednesday, some new cracks appeared as his Momofuku restaurant group announced that it would not reopen Momofuku Nishi, in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, and Momofuku CCDC, in Washington.
“We are so grateful to everyone that made ccdc and nishi what they were,” read a post on the company’s official Instagram page, @momolongplay.
CCDC was the largest Momofuku restaurant to date when it opened five years ago in Mr. Chang’s hometown. Nishi initially offered Italian dishes with a twist, but later revamped its menu.
“This crisis has exposed the underlying vulnerabilities of our industry and made clear that returning to normal is not an option,” Momofuku’s chief executive, Marguerite Zabar Mariscal, wrote in a post on its website. “For our industry to have a future, we must do nothing less than rethink how restaurants operate.”
In response to an email to Ryan Healey, the vice president of brand and marketing, the company said it would not comment beyond its online posts and remarks made in Wednesday’s episode of “The Dave Chang Show,” a podcast hosted by the chef.
On the podcast, Ms. Mariscal tells Mr. Chang, “With what we have, we now have to kind of make choices. So we are making the very difficult decision to basically consolidate and condense our footprint to be in a better spot to come out of this.”
As part of that consolidation, Momofuku Ssam Bar, in the East Village, is moving to Bar Wayo, a Momofuku outpost at South Street Seaport. The staffs of the two businesses will combine, Ms. Mariscal wrote.
The two permanent closings are among the most high-profile since the coronavirus outbreak. Small independent restaurants face existential questions about their future, and owners have scrambled to obtain federal loans. Restaurant failures may have devastating effects for cities across the country.
“I’m not being hyperbolic in any way,” Mr. Chang warned in the Times Magazine interview. “Without government intervention, there will be no service industry whatsoever.”
In the past two years, Momofuku doubled its roster of restaurants to 16, in New York, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, as well as Toronto and Sydney, Australia. “While this was a thrilling period, it wasn’t sustainable,” Ms. Mariscal wrote.
Both Nishi and CCDC operated on especially tight profit margins, she added. “But as we looked at new realities, neither restaurant had enough cushion to sustain the shock of this crisis.
“We investigated every scenario to make the math work — negotiating with our landlords, changing the service model, and more — but with increased investments in health and safety, huge reopening expenses, and the lack of rent relief, the financial picture of these wholly-owned restaurants no longer made sense.”
The Momofuku group has laid off some employees and reduced the pay of those who remain. It will continue to offer employees help through the Momofuku Bluetape Fund, Ms. Mariscal wrote, and has committed to paying the costs of medical insurance through the Cobra program.
Ms. Mariscal urged sustainable growth in the future. “With New York as the epicenter of this crisis,” she wrote, “we need to consolidate our resources there to strengthen our most stable restaurants.”