Restaurants take extra coronavirus precautions
Eateries add curbside pickup, servers at buffets
There might be nothing left to do except eat and drink. Events are canceled in light of coronavirus, but restaurants and bars are open and trying to reassure guests that they’re taking their usual — and more — sanitary precautions, and they’re accommodating nervous customers in novel ways.
On Friday, the Tandem, a Southernstyle restaurant at 1848 W. Fond du Lac Ave., began offering curbside pickup for the first time because of coronavirus. “Not tryna be around other people lately?” the restaurant said in an Instagram post. “We got you — call in any order a half-hour before you wanna pick it up and Charles will run it out to you curbside! We can accept cash or credit card.”
Tandem chef-owner Caitlin Cullen said Friday morning, “We lost 10 grand in catering commitments in the last 30 hours.”
So Cullen instituted curbside pickup and was beginning to devise delivery options for next week as well as coming up with other streams of revenue, such as apparel and other items that can be shipped.
Another restaurant that hasn’t offered delivery in the past, the finer-dining seafood restaurant Third Coast Provisions at 724 N. Milwaukee St., is trying to launch it next week and in the meantime offering takeout in addition to regular table service.
Meanwhile, chef-owner A.J. Dixon of Lazy Susan, 2378 S. Howell Ave., canceled the restaurant’s annual St. Patrick’s Day party and is instead offering St. Patrick’s Day to go. Patrons can call ahead or stop in to order the housemade corned beef dinner and dessert as carryout for $20.
Dixon has seen a drop in reservations since the upswing in concern over coronavirus. At noon Friday, she had only six reservations for dinner in the evening; at the same time last week, she had three times as many, plus had walk-in traffic and a wait for tables.
If patrons stay away, restaurateurs say, the economic results could be devastating.
One high-profile closure, if temporary, came Friday: Good City Downtown, the craft brewery’s location at 333 W. Juneau Ave. in the Fiserv Forum’s Deer District, said it is closed to the public indefinitely. Its CEO pointed to the suspended NBA season and large-scale event cancellations in Milwaukee while saying the venue still would hold private events.
Dixon is worried that there is no insurance coverage for this sort of loss of business and finds taking out a loan hard to swallow. “If the state mandates an entire shutdown, I have nothing,” she said.
In talking with other chefs, she said, “We’re all extremely worried.”
Besides concerns over her business, she’s worried for her servers, whose income drops when fewer tipping customers come in.
Although a movement is encouraging diners to buy gift cards at restaurants to infuse them with cash now, Dixon worries about the day they’ll all be redeemed. “We operate at such a thin margin that we need constant money all the time, flowing in,” she said.
A new way to buffet
COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, isn’t foodborne; it’s spread person to person, mainly in respiratory droplets from an ill person who coughs or sneezes. Someone might contract it by touching an object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose or eyes, but the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it’s not believed to be the main way COVID-19 is spread.
Still, to keep large numbers of customers from handling common utensils, restaurants are changing buffet service.
At Bartolotta Restaurants’ Harbor House, 550 N. Harbor Drive, the Sunday brunch buffet will be different. Staff members will serve diners, and some menu items will be served family style.
At the popular lunchtime buffet at
Mekong Cafe, 5930 W. North Ave., staff members are serving customers at the buffet line, instead of the customers helping themselves as usual.
“Everyone was really receptive,” said Sichanh Phongsavat, an owner of the restaurant.
She wanted to take steps such as changing the buffet and frequently cleaning hot sauce bottles to reassure her customers because “we want to stay open. After everything is said and done, we still want to be here.”
Business has been lighter since the coronavirus outbreak, and as at other restaurants, larger parties frequently are the ones that cancel reservations, like a party of 12 older adults that canceled on Friday. “It’s understandable,” Phongsavat said. “My priority is everyone’s safety.”
Friends and family of hers who work at or run Chinese and some other Asian restaurants say they’ve been especially hard hit, she said, because some diners associate the virus with China.
“We have no traffic in our restaurants,” they tell her, afraid they’ll have to close and concerned about their employees’ incomes.
Mekong, like other restaurants such as Le Reve Patisserie & Cafe at 7610 Harwood Ave. in Wauwatosa and Riverwest Filling Station at 701 E. Keefe Ave., has stationed hand sanitizers around the restaurants for customers to use.
They’re also sanitizing surfaces more frequently, including doorknobs. Phongsavat said Mekong workers wipe everything down at least every two hours. “People see that and think, ‘I can still somewhat live a normal life’ ” by continuing to dine out, she said.
Sick? Stay home
Although restaurants in social media posts are encouraging healthy diners to visit (and to wash their hands before and after eating), they’re also encouraging the ones who are ill to stay home.
A number also have said that ill employees are encouraged to stay home, and if they show up to work, they’ll be sent home.
Dan Jacobs, the chef-owner with Dan Van Rite of Dandan, Fauntleroy and EsterEv, was exploring how the company might extend sick pay for salaried employees. In the meantime, employees are told if they have any symptoms, they should stay home and call their doctors.
Besides keeping sick workers home and frequent hand washing, advice from the Wisconsin Restaurant Association to its members has included cleaning objects such as menus and condiment bottles more frequently and spacing diners farther apart than usual.
Even before the dawn of COVID-19, restaurants were adhering to stringent governmental rules about hand washing and general sanitation — their licenses depend on it.
“Already our cleanliness standards have to be super high,” said Sarah Baker, co-owner of pasta restaurant Ca’Lucchenzo at 6030 W. North Ave. in Wauwatosa. A restaurant’s surfaces are more likely to be frequently wiped down than other places’, she contended. “Now we’re just taking some extra steps,” such as wiping down chairs and tables with peroxide solution.
Contact dining critic Carol Deptolla at carol.deptolla@jrn.com or (414) 2242841, or through the Journal Sentinel Food & Home page on Facebook. Follow her on Twitter at @mkediner or Instagram at @mke_diner.