Restaurant Revival: Misery Loves Co. + Onion City Chicken & Oyster

ONION CITY CHICKEN & OYSTER (FOUNDED 2022)

WINOOSKI

Laura Wade and Aaron Josinsky: “We’re more balanced as a business and as a family.”

Laura: Laying off people on Sunday, March 15 was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It was the weirdest service, knowing we would close at the end of the day. We gave our employees food and toilet paper. And then we all went home, not knowing what the future would hold.

We spent that month at home with our daughter who was 7 at the time. It was bizarre, strange, and wonderful. We had to relearn parenting. That made us realize how out-ofbalance our lives had become. We enjoyed having meals as a family, taking dog walks, cooking together. And everyone else was doing the same.

Aaron: It sounds so weird to say, but being at home made us realize you had to make food all the time. No more family meal we could eat standing up at the restaurant before service. Food became real. So we started preparing meals to-go to make other people’s lives a little easier. Misery offered curbside from June through the fall, and we turned what had been the dining room into a neighborhood market with a fridge and freezer of take-home meals and pantry items. We changed our entire vibe and approach. It seemed more appropriate in a time of stress and trauma to offer comforting things that were made well.

Laura: We’re pretty scrappy and have a history of evolving. That mentality definitely helped us through the pandemic.

This is the most fulfilled we’ve ever felt as business owners. Our schedules are healthier, and we’re more balanced as a business and as a family.

Aaron: The pandemic gave us time to think. We threw a lot of ideas against the wall and frankly, very little stuck. But we’ve always had too many ideas for our own good. We decided to lean in to being the neighborhood place that sustains and nurtures, the spot where people can come multiple times a week. Misery Loves Co. has morphed from a full-service dinner and brunch restaurant into a bruncheonette. We opened our sister restaurant, Onion City Chicken & Oyster, in August 2022. We had always done oysters and fried chicken; we just decided to separate them from the Misery menu and to move them across the street to this new space. It was like the kids needed to move out of the house and have their own apartment.

Laura: This past summer, we adjusted our approach to finding potential staff who could fill blended positions. We streamlined the application process and stepped away to let our core management team handle the interviewing and hiring.

Aaron: If you lose a lot of ego and trust the people around you, you get a lot more accomplished more efficiently.

Laura: This is the most fulfilled we’ve ever felt as business owners. Our schedules are healthier, and we’re more balanced as a business and as a family. We still have dinner with our daughter five nights a week, which had been unfathomable pre-pandemic. That drives the decisions we make for ourselves and our staff.