Small restaurants and bars plot strategies to survive coronavirus closure in Illinois
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Metro-east restaurant and bar owners have spent the last 36 hours trying to figure out how to cope with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s decision Sunday to prohibit dine-in service from Tuesday through March 30 to slow the spread of coronavirus.
The order will hit locally-owned establishments particularly hard.
It allows food to be delivered or picked up from drive-through windows or curbsides, and that works well for fast-food chains such as McDonald’s or Chick-fill-A with infrastructure already in place. But it may not be practical or economical for some small eateries.
“It’s scary,” said Shane Giger, 45, of Maryville, who reopened The Sandwich Shop Diner in October.
“January and February were slow, and then the first week of March, people were coming back, and we were starting to see some revenue. Then all of a sudden, this happens.”
Giger has decided to offer carry-outs, which normally make up only 10 percent of his business, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily. Most of his 23 employees will be laid off, and it’s anybody’s guess if the plan will work. Part of the Main Street diner’s appeal is its social interaction.
Two full-time servers, Shelly Howell and Diane Keeling, have agreed to rotate shifts and share the financial burden. Other employees are wondering if they will be eligible for unemployment benefits.
Howell, 59, is encouraged by government leaders promising emergency assistance and Illinois power companies forgoing late fees.
“It’s all helpful, but there’s going to be a period of time before they get caught up,” she said. “It’s going to be hard for people who don’t have money in the bank. ... The worst part is the uncertainty. You really don’t know what’s going to happen.”
‘Another hard step to take’
Pritzker’s decision to prohibit dine-in services at restaurants and bars came on the same day the U.S. Centers for Disease Control urged a nationwide halt to all gatherings of 50 people or more due to the international coronavirus pandemic.
“This is another hard step to take,” the governor stated Sunday. “I know how difficult this will be on small businesses around the state. But we must do everything we can to safeguard the health of the citizens of Illinois, and that requires this urgent action.
“The time for persuasion and public appeals is over. The time for action is here. This is not a joke. No one is immune to this, and you have an obligation to act in the best interests of all the people of this state.”
On Monday, President Donald Trump went further than the CDC to recommend that people avoid groups of 10 or more.
Keith Schell and his wife, Mary Dahm-Schell, were making plans Monday to shut down their business, The Edge, an 80,000-square-foot entertainment complex in Belleville with an arcade, theater, go-kart track and restaurant and sports bar called D.S. Vespers.
March is normally their second-busiest month of the year after December. Customers start venturing out of their houses to enjoy warmer weather, celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and watch big sporting events on TV.
Most of those sporting events have been canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’ve got $20,000 worth of perishable food,” said Keith Schell, 59. “We’re going to donate it to our employees. We have to. We’re not going to be in the position of maintaining payroll.”
The Edge has about 100 employees.
“We’ve been paying unemployment to the government for 25 years with virtually no claims,” Schell said. “They’ve been taking our money, so now it’s time for them to pay up. I just hope that our employees can get access to help pretty quickly.”
No more coffee house chats
Sacred Grounds Cafe in Edwardsville announced Monday evening that it would continue to serve coffee, baked goods and other items on a carry-out basis, but there will be no pushing tables together for the usual chats about politics and culture.
Longtime server Chris Hanna, 47, of Wood River, worries that many Americans will get depressed because of fear and isolation, but he praised Pritzker’s order and other actions to protect people from coronavirus.
“I agree that it should be done, honestly,” he said. “A lot of people are doing what they want to do, but it’s a serious situation, and it’s in our back yard. It’s not a state away or a country away. It’s here. ... It’s such a huge mess, and it’s nobody’s fault. People just need to be aware and cautious and safe.”
Brandon Case and Patrick Thirion, owners of three Peel Pizza locations, have two sets of rules to follow. In Edwardsville and O’Fallon, they will close their seating areas and offer curbside pickups from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. with a somewhat reduced menu.
Their location in Clayton, Missouri, will operate under normal conditions. Missouri Gov. Mike Parsons announced Monday that he didn’t plan to close restaurants and bars in the state.
Peel has about 150 employees on the Illinois side.
“We’re going to try to utilize as many as possible to make this work,” Case said. “It’s uncharted territory. No one has ever been through this before.
“We put out a letter to our employees and said we’ve never felt more helpless in our 10 years in business. We have no control over this. We’re just going to have to follow the rules and stipulations that the governor has put out there. We don’t have a choice. ... It’s devastating.”
Beer still being brewed
Bryan Schubert already had batches of beer brewing at his business, Millpond Brewing & Incubator in Millstadt, when Pritzker’s order made it illegal for people to hang out in bars.
Schubert, 40, sprang into action to keep the business going. He had taken an entrepreneurial risk last year, renovating an iconic Shell service station before opening in the fall.
“We put a post on Facebook and Instagram and told people that we are going to be open from 3 to 8 p.m. so they can have their growlers filled,” he said. “Outside growlers will have to go through a sanitation process. We also have growlers for people who don’t have them already.”
Schubert borrowed a “can-sealer” from a friend who owns a Missouri brewery, allowing Millpond to start canning its beer and selling four-packs. He designed a new label Sunday night and arranged for printing on Monday.
Customers can buy beer at the counter or call ahead for curbside pickup. Schubert isn’t sure how his nine employees will be affected.
“We’re trying to give them shifts as much as we can to help soften the blow, but this is all very new to us,” he said. ”We’re still trying to work things out.”
Coronavirus came at a tricky time for Doc and Susan Richardson, owners of Doc’s Smokehouse in Edwardsville, who just expanded the 5-year-old restaurant into a bigger space. But Susan called Pritzker’s order a “good decision,” considering the crisis in Italy.
Doc’s will start delivering food from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and offer carry-outs and curbside pickups from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, partly to keep from laying off employees.
“Certainly, we’d love to see the same revenues as we normally have,” Susan Richardson said. “But our labor costs will be going down, and we’re hoping that the ratios will balance out. We’ll just have to do the best we can under the circumstances. We’re not ones to panic.”
Free lunches for schoolchildren
The Richardsons worry not just about employees, but also children who depend on free or reduced-price school lunches. On Friday, Pritzker announced that all Illinois schools would close for two weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Doc’s will give free lunches from 11 a.m. to noon daily to students who can’t afford them.
Good Heavens BBQ & Bakery, which recently moved to a new location in East St. Louis, has instituted a similar program.
“I started thinking about the children in our community who depend on school lunches,” said co-owner Kattie Goodwin, 53, of Belleville. “So we decided, with the parents’ permission, we’re going to give them one hot dog and a bag of chips per day until we run out.”
Good Heavens is primarily a carry-out business, so it will continue to operate with normal business hours, 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays.
The pandemic has dealt three blows to Brenda Whitaker, who owns three Granite City businesses affected by Pritzker’s order: Garden Gate Tea House, The Downtown Diner and Novel Idea Bookstore & More, which includes a coffee house. She has about 20 employees.
Whitaker, 57, was in the process of moving Garden Gate, so the old location closed about a week ago. It’s reopening will now be delayed.
The bookstore will be closed for the next two weeks. The Downtown Diner will offer curbside pickup from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily, but Whitaker isn’t sure customers will place orders, given that many are staying home for fear of getting infected.
“Anytime a small business closes, it affects another small business in the area,” she said. “I just hope all of us can weather this storm. Not just me, all of us.
“They’re saying we’ll be closed for two weeks, but what if it’s four weeks or six weeks? Then you start losing employees. There’s just so many unknown variables. We want everyone to be safe, but how do you keep things going?”
This story was originally published March 17, 2020 at 10:24 AM.
