Restaurants served up integrity by closing

Most of us believe we would do the right thing, even when no one is watching. C.S. Lewis called that the definition of integrity.

We have heard, and probably repeated to our children, some of the more famous sayings about doing the right thing.

Like Martin Luther King Jr. saying, “It is always the right time to do the right thing.”

Or Mark Twain saying, “Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”

We believe in doing the right thing. We do.

But it’s not often that we are put to the test, the real test, when doing the right thing costs us. When it costs us professionally, when it costs us personally, when it costs us monetarily.

The owners of two local restaurants faced just such a situation not long ago.

And they did the right thing.

Under the guidelines established by the state, an eatery does not need to close for a time if one of its employees tests positive for COVID-19. There is no heavy-handed enforcement. Either Gov. Doug Ducey didn’t believe that enforcement of such a regulation was possible, or he believed that imposing one would be too unpopular. Or both.

But, as it is, restaurants are on the honor system.

They’re asked to follow CDC guidelines. To do what they believe to be best for the community.

The owners of Helton Brewing Company in Phoenix and Alo Cafe in Scottsdale did just that.

Faced with a situation that was going to cost them personally, professionally and monetarily, they did the right thing.

They closed.

Steve Martinez said that one of his servers at Alo had been in contact with an employee of another restaurant where a staff member tested positive. He said the person who tested positive for COVID-19 was never at Alo Cafe, but he didn’t want to take the chance that the novel coronavirus might have been carried there.

So, on May 15, he closed his doors. “I immediately shut my restaurant on Friday. It cost me thousands of dollars to shut down, but I had to because of the potential risk,” he said.

Brian Helton, the owner of Helton Brewing Company, found out that someone who had been in the brewery’s building had tested positive. It wasn’t an employee.

“Maybe I’m overreacting,” Helton said. “It cost me a week of sales, but that’s OK. I have a social responsibility to the public.”

Martinez echoed those comments. “If we don’t do it right, we are going to have a bigger shutdown,” Martinez said.

He’s frustrated by the lack of more strenuous regulations.

Martinez told The Arizona Republic, “I called the health department who regulates restaurants and they said, well, it’s a sticky thing and there’s nothing we can do. So then they referred me to the Department of Public Safety and a COVID hotline, so then I thought I was getting somewhere. But they said there’s only guidelines with no way to enforce them, so it’s (the owner’s) discretion of what to do.”

The two restaurants took all the precautions, tested employees, made sure things were safe and have reopened.

I’m sure that many other Valley restaurateurs would have done the same thing. But these two actually did it.

So if you’re looking for a place to have a great breakfast or lunch (Alo) or feeling like you could use a locally brewed craft beer (Helton), I could think of a few places to try. You’d be doing the right thing.