Sam Toia, based on appearances alone, looks more Lex Luthor than Superman. The guy is bald, bald, bald, rarely the tallest one in the room, though also baldly persistent, and full of charisma, able to leap tall bureaucracies in a relatively short period of time. But not without stumbles, of course. Toia is president and CEO of the Illinois Restaurant Association, and this week, after weeks of arguing that Gov. J.B. Pritzker was mishandling restaurant reopening, dooming the state’s largest private-sector employer, Toia stood at a lectern beside his old friend and glumly pointed to “a glimmer of light.”
He’s not the type to hide dissatisfaction, to maintain a plastered smile. To slow the coronavirus, the governor wants our restaurants to reopen slowly, to offer just outdoor seating at first; a day later, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot paused even that baby step.
Toia wants to move faster.
Too fast, some say.
Those who know and have worked with him describe Sam Toia — who likely first came to the attention of many Chicagoans during the governor’s daily update on Wednesday or a news conference with Lightfoot on May 8 — as the ball of energy, the consummate fixer, tirelessly tenacious, politically connected.
In other words, a classic Chicago character.
Inside the old menus at Leona’s, the local Italian restaurant chain that Toia’s family founded in 1950 (but no longer owns), each of the key family members was introduced, with Sam described as the guy who put out fires — metaphorically, of course. No doubt, if fire requires oxygen, Toia knows how to chew every ounce, his voice a steady rat-a-tat, a plummy splatter of old-school Chicago-ese, full of dats and dems and dose.
And yet, he’s no steamroller, said Dan Raskin, co-owner of Manny’s delicatessen and a member of the Illinois Restaurant Association (or IRA) advisory council. “This is a guy who understands compromise, who is realistic, who is very into making long-term relationships. (Restaurateurs) come to him with problems, and he doesn’t enter meetings and insist on things. He knows it’s better to step away with something at the end of the day than nothing. When City Hall went from (Mayor Rahm) Emanuel to Lightfoot, he didn’t waste time. Everything changed but he was, ‘OK, we now make new relationships.’ Sam can pivot. And never too right or too left.”
“Sam is the guy reaching across the aisle,” said Kevin Boehm, an IRA board member and co-founder of the Boka Restaurant Group, which includes Girl & the Goat and GT Prime Steakhouse. “He’s well liked, but can be tough. Which is a difficult place to live.”
Toia speaks in affirmations, slogans.
Be at the table, not on the menu.
You got to make friends before you need them.
“TEAMWORK!” is also a favorite. “It’s the first thing that comes out,” Boehm said. “You say, ‘Sam, great job,’ Sam says ‘TEAMWORK!’ He’s what you call a strong personality.”
Toia keeps a rigid routine, a long day.
He’s the type of guy who owns an inversion board, one of those torture devices sold as exercise equipment in which the person working out is strapped in, hung upside down. (He spoke by phone Thursday; some of that conversation is edited below.)
Q: OK, why?
Toia: Most every night I lay on it. It helps push your organs back into place after a day of standing. I work out a lot. This is my life. You could say I never work or I never stop working. But if I don’t take care of myself, how can I take care of my family or my members? How do I do this if I don’t take care of myself? How do I, if I stop learning? Learn something new every day. Communication! Education! The key to success!
Q: You sound like you’re selling something on TV at 3 in the morning.
Toia: Ha! There you go! No, look, I understand the restaurant industry, I understand what they are up against now — and I knew before the pandemic. They’re dealing with building people, business affairs, the health department, the liquor commissioner. I get it because, remember, I was that guy, the one putting out the fires in the family restaurant.
Jonathan Swain, owner of Kimbark Liquor & Wine Shoppe in Hyde Park, is an old friend of the IRA president. He remembers first meeting Toia at a board meeting for Kimbark Plaza, which has a Leona’s. “Who is this guy?” he immediately thought.
“I mean, we start talking politics and I was, ‘Who is this guy who runs a restaurant and understands South Side politics?'” Swain recalled. “He tells me that he and Bobby Rush go way back. OK now — what? This Italian guy? What I have come to appreciate is this: Chicagoans get locked inside their neighborhood boxes, but Sam understands all the neighborhoods, because Sam had a Leona’s in like every part of the city. So going from a restaurant to running the state restaurant association, that makes perfect sense if you know Sam.”
In fact, he hasn’t just run the IRA. In the eight years since he’s been president, Toia helped transformed what once felt like a political lobby into a broader cultural player. Toia, in conversation, mentions no less than a half-dozen times, like a mantra, that Chicago is the nation’s culinary capital and he doesn’t care who argues that with him.
Alpana Singh, the restaurant owner and sommelier (and host of “Check, Please!” on WTTW), said, “Sam was one of the first people who grasped the importance of getting the James Beard Awards here.” In 2015, Toia was instrumental in convincing the New York-based culinary foundation to relocate its annual award ceremony (the industry equivalent to the Oscars) after 24 years from Manhattan to Chicago. “Without Sam, we wouldn’t have had the Beards,” Singh said.
Shelia O’Grady, the previous IRA president, had been chief of staff for Mayor Richard M. Daley; she had never owned a restaurant. She also established the Chicago Gourmet festival in Millennium Park and strengthened the association as a political lobby. She had worked to overturn the city’s former ban on foie gras and pushed back on food-truck operators who wanted to cook inside trucks parked close to restaurants. She left soon after Daley was succeeded by Rahm Emanuel. The same day Toia became IRA president, the Chicago City Council passed an ordinance allowing cooking on food trucks; a week later, the IRA won the bidding process to run Taste of Chicago.
Q: The Illinois Restaurant Association feels more prominent now.
Toia: Well, I don’t know if those before had my energy or passion! At the time I became president, my family was winding down with Leona’s. I had been (IRA) chairman and people said, “Sam, this job is YOU.” It has restaurants, advocacy, governmental relations. And remember, I studied community and government relations at DePaul University. This job was made for me!
Sure: Toia had been president of the Central Lakeview Merchants Association. Also, Emanuel appointed him to Chicago’s Zoning Board of Appeals. Also, former Gov. Rod Blagojevich (whose campaigns had received more than $30,000 from Toia and Leona’s) named Toia to the board of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, which oversees Navy Pier and McCormick Place. Also, he’s also on the board of directors for Choose Chicago, the organization that advocates for Chicago as a tourism destination.
When Gov. Pritzker announced in early May that restaurants would not be phased into reopening until at least late June, Toia told the Tribune the plan arrived as a complete surprise to him and that the state had not consulted with the IRA. Which soon changed.
Q: So what happened?
Toia: I have known the governor since the late 1990s. I worked on his campaign when he ran for Congress in 1998. He came in third. Again, all restaurateurs care about the health and safety of their team members and guests, and we want to hear what scientists and doctors say, but my job is representing the hospitality industry in this state. Their economic model will not allow us to wait until June 26. So I was communicating, communicating, communicating with the governor’s office. And with Mayor Lightfoot. Guests in beds, diners in seats — Chicago is all about its tourism, and that’s what they care about, too. The mayor understands. And the governor understands.
Q: So you pick up the phone and say, “J.B., what’s the deal?”
Toia: Basically. And I keep calling, and calling. I have known J.B. 20 years, we have mutual friends — so you get those mutual friends to call him, too. People we both know.
It’s not unusual now for Sean Rapelyea, deputy chief of staff for external affairs in the governor’s office, to hear from Toia late into the night. “Just all hours of the day, he calls.”
Rapelyea said that during recent talks on raising state minimum wage, Toia was “at the table going to do what’s best for all parties.” He said Toia “can go on and on about gross receipts — he taught a lot of legislators about restaurants.” Toia advocated for a “reasonable” raise in minimum wages; he called Chicago’s own gradual raise in tipped wages a “pragmatic” step. But that preference for incremental steps is being tested now.
Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa of the 35th Ward, which includes parts of Logan Square, Avondale and Hermosa, thinks that the IRA, Toia and the National Restaurant Association are all pushing too much too soon.
“A pace needs to be set by science, epidemiologists, peer-review studies,” Ramirez-Rosa said. “This isn’t unique to Sam. I really like Sam personally. He is easy to talk to, he is tenacious, I have no personal issues with him. But we have seen the NRA, the policies it pushes, certain restaurateurs, putting the horse before the cart. The cart is normal operations. The horse cannot be an economic imperative. I am hearing from people experiencing a record number of deaths in their communities. Many of them work in restaurants that do continue to operate right now. We shouldn’t sacrifice the health of the most vulnerable for economic health of a few.”
He’s not alone.
Michael Bransford, the owner of Vincent in Andersonville, said he listened to Toia’s statement and the plan made him a little uneasy. He said he watched the masked servers at a nearby restaurant serving takeout to unmasked customers outside. “If half the conversation is not going to wear a mask, I’m not sure what that does for me,” he said. “We have a patio for outdoor seating but I’m not sure we’re even ready. We could maybe seat two tables at a time? There’s hope here, but myself, I would stay very cautious.”
Toia doesn’t disagree. He agreed with Mayor Lightfoot’s decision to halt the May 29 reopening as too soon to get every neighborhood on board. O’Grady, the former IRA head, said a pandemic is exactly the kind of situation for which a trade association exists, and that Toia is doing “exactly the right things.” But here’s what he’s facing:
As of May, roughly half of the state’s nearly 600,000 restaurant workers had been either furloughed or laid off. He’s watching Illinois residents take weekend trips to eat inside the open restaurants of border states: Wisconsin, Missouri, Indiana, Iowa. He says most restaurants in Illinois, since March, have seen at least 70% of their income vanish.
Q: What’s at the other end?
A: Oh, baby. We will beat the virus. Chicago will stay the culinary capital of the United States. Customers want to come back but they want to feel safe. We started the year with 25,000 restaurants — 7,500 in Chicago — and the NRA is saying maybe 25% won’t reopen? Lean years ahead. We could get on a plane and travel to a restaurant …
Q: But how many will?
A: Right. You know, the worst thing that would happen here is to come out of this pandemic then go back into shelter-in-place. Then, I think, the industry really might die.
It’s the grimmest thing he says, the least hopeful. The rest of the time, he reads like a politician-in-wait, biding his time. He says never say never, that he likes his job too much.
But Singh says he has an encyclopedic knowledge and grasp of Chicago politics. “A lot of us are curious if he’d ever run for something, I’ve asked him myself if he would run. He says he deals now with the two things he loves most, politics and restaurants.
“Which is a very political way of answering.”
![By ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON and DARLENE SUPERVILLE (Associated Press) WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday said the first rule to set minimum staffing levels at federally funded nursing homes and require that a certain portion of the taxpayer dollars they receive go toward wages for care workers is a long-overdue “milestone” that […]](https://www.chicagotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Election_2024-Harris_89203.jpg?w=525 "By ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON and DARLENE SUPERVILLE (Associated Press) WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday said the first rule to set minimum staffing levels at federally funded nursing homes and require that a certain portion of the taxpayer dollars they receive go toward wages for care workers is a long-overdue “milestone” that […]")