“Honestly, at this point, it's hard to say exactly what we're going to do because it changes weekly it seems like,” Josh Thomas, co-owner of Brenen’s Coffee Cafe, said. “I can tell you right now, if everything holds as is, then obviously when the students come back we will continue to have very limited seating indoors.”
Other safety measures at Brenen’s, located on 38 S Court St., include masks, screens at all the counters, extended outdoor seating and hourly sanitizing.
“We continue to do hourly sanitizing and we'll just continue to do that on a regular basis to make sure that when the students come back, we're going to be as safe as we can possibly be,” Thomas said. “And that's pretty much all we can do ... continue to do this thing routinely and stick with it.”
Larry’s Dawg House, located at 410 W Union St., plans to continue using aggressive cleaning measures.
Every 15 minutes, the staff at Larry’s Dawg House sends someone around to do steam cleaning in the dining room and doorways. The staff uses an anti microbial spray that is all organic and food friendly, so it’s not harmful in case of ingestion, Dillan King, general manager at Larry’s Dawg House, said.
In addition to those cleaning methods, Larry’s Dawg House is enforcing a quarantine policy for employees. Students who have class in-person will be allowed to work 72 hours later, and employees who took a vacation will have to take at least a week off to quarantine.
“If they go to like a highly, densely populated area, or where there's a high contraction of cases going on, then … I extended that up to two weeks with some of my employees,” King said.
Goodfella’s Pizza, located at 6 W Union St., is currently not allowing dine-in service. It will continue to serve customers via carryout and follow state guidelines for restaurants.
Despite all the safety measures in place, a concern for students returning still lingers.
“With us being a student base town … we were almost under a level four (warning level) recently, and I think a lot of that's attributed to when the students were returning and coming in for move-in weekend and things like that,” King said. “I feel that a lot of students are a little more careless as far as keeping physical distance and things like that.”
Shawn Ritchie, owner of Goodfella’s Pizza, said as long as people follow safety guidelines, he isn’t worried.
“Everyone's concerned with an uptick in population that we might see an increase in disease rate,” he said. “But … we do try to stick to all the state's guidelines on social distancing and masks. So as long as everyone's respectful (of) those guidelines, I don't have any real worries.”
Throughout the summer, restaurants have made adjustments to their business that have resulted in revenue losses and inconveniences for everyone.
"It's not an easy thing for everybody to do,” Thomas said. “They've had to spend a lot of money, they've had to spend a lot of time and hopefully when when everybody comes back, just understand … that it's gonna be a frustrating process for everybody involved, because it's just not going to be like it was back in March, or back in February.”