After Coronavirus, not all restaurant openings look the same

Texas Governor Abbott’s phase three Reopening Texas order was released June 3, and allowed restaurants to increase occupancy from 50 to 75 percent.

While it was a benefit to some, not all restaurants were able to increase their occupancy.

City Cafe owned and operated by Ray Copening was able to increase their seating, but Harvey’s was not able to increase the number of customers they can serve in their dining room.

City Cafe Manager Iris Sullivan said, “We were excited when we were able to reopen our dining room.

We were never completely closed, we were open for carry out only during the shut down period. However, when we are able to open the dining room we were ready to welcome our dining customers back.”

They can now seat 38 people and each week more of their customers are dining in and they have seen a number of new customers.

“Being able to increase occupancy is very helpful, not only for our customers, but for the staff who depends on the tips to supplement our salaries,” she said.

Sullivan said they are taking sanitizing to the extreme trying to keep the employees and customers safe.

“We wipe everything down with straight bleach. Between each customer we sanitize the tables, and seats. We continually wipe down handles, the bathrooms, and any place our customers touch. Your safety is our upmost concern,” said Sullivan.

She said since they reopened their dining room their business has increased and they have seen several new customers.

“We are still offering curb-side pickup for those who are concerned about eating out or have trouble getting up our steps. When they call in their order, we watch for them and carry their food out to them,” said Sullivan.

Harvey’s Family Restaurant owned by Jeffery and Andrea Pogatshnik could not increase their occupancy because of the dining room size. They are still at 25 percent occupancy.

However, Andrea said more customers are coming out to eat so they hustle to get the tables sanitized and ready for the next customers as soon as someone leaves.

“We can have 28 people in our dining room at a time because we can only use eight of our booths. We had to take the tables out of the middle of the dining room to meet the six-foot distant requirement,” said Andrea. “We are ready to be fully open, but until then we are thankful we can still serve our customers with limited dining capacity, pickup at our drive-thru window, and our delivery service. We are grateful for the support of our community.”

She said during COVID-19 they saw a decrease in business, but with pickup at their drive-thru window and their delivery service they were able to survive.

“It is nice to have the dining room open and get to see our friends and customers.

We have missed them,” she said. “When we first opened our dining room business was still slow, but now more of our customers are coming in. We have been so blessed through this with the support of our community and customers. I have always said, without our community supporting us we only have a building.”

The couple has added outside dining tables under the awning in front of the business, but with the arrival of hot summer days, not a lot of people take advantage of them.

Andrea said with the number of positive cases of COVID-19 increasing again it does make her a bit nervous.

“We just want to thank our community and customers for their support,” she said.

Andrea and Jeffery have owned the business four years, in August.