(Adair) Later this week restaurants will be allowed to re-open at 50% capacity, but that doesn’t mean every establishment is in a rush to welcome people back in the door.
Jim Zimmerline, owner of Zipp’s Pizzaria in Adair, wasn’t quite comfortable yet with going back to business as usual. “We just feel it’s not quite time. To get to our cash register walking in you would have to go by a lot of people that are eating with traffic going in and out. I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable, and I just think that it is maybe a little bit too early.”
In the end it was a pretty easy decision to continue with carryout only. “Its taken a lot of time to get used to doing this and now I think we have it down a lot better than we did at the start. At first it was a mess, but you have to thank everyone for eating out as much as they do. It has been good.”
Zimmerline was asked what it will take to finally feel comfortable with opening the doors for customers to dine in. “I don’t know if there is going to be a comfortable anymore. It’s going to be a while.”
Zimmerline admits a soft re-open could be a challenge for some establishments. Employees will have to come back to work and lose unemployment benefits, but operating at 50% capacity would cut the earning potential in half.
