Time to dine out again
It’s a Thursday lunchtime in New Plymouth’s Deluxe Diner.
Waiting staff are hard at work and the sounds of vintage rock ‘n’ roll fill the air.
There are 19 customers seated at the tables of the 1950s-style restaurant, but there’s capacity for 100. However, owner Chere Bailey is quite happy.
This particular Thursday, May 14, is the first time she’s been able to open the doors to customers in seven weeks.
It’s not particularly busy, but she didn’t really want to be on the first day the lockdown was eased.
‘‘The big thing is not to make money,’’ she says. ‘‘The big thing is just to survive.
‘‘We’d wanted to do a soft opening. We did not want to get crowded.’’
Things have had to change with the move to level 2.
Hand sanitiser is prominently featured at the register, where under contact tracing regulations customers now have to sign in.
The pen is wiped clean by a staff member after every signature.
The food choices have been simplified, concentrating on the most popular items such as burgers and ribs, while staff get back to speed.
‘‘You have to think everything you’re doing.’’
The laminated menus have been taken away and replaced about with paper ones.
Just under 1000 have been printed and each table gets one, which is disposed of at the end of the meal.
Eventually, Bailey hopes to do away with printed menus in favour of ordering from a smartphone.
It’s another way of reducing the contact that could spread coronavirus.
Perhaps the biggest change is the diner’s move to online orders, allowing customers to collect their meals to eat at home.
This is actually an unexpected benefit of the lockdown, Bailey says.
She and husband Bill had already been toying with the idea, but a month’s home quarantine gave them the chance to focus on it, as well as giving them a break.
Bill, who built the diner’s website after teaching himself computing, also made the food ordering app, which they started after the country went into level 3 at 11.59pm on April 27.
Orders were quiet at first but picked up.
‘‘Mother’s Day was insane.’’ Bailey took up the Government’s wage subsidy, which meant she has been able to keep all 18 of her staff.
‘‘We would have been crushed without it.’’
She said the subsidy allows them to concentrate on getting through the month ahead rather than the need to make money.
‘‘We feel like we’ll survive it.’’
The new evidence extends the period these two species of early humans co-existed.