OLDS - Restaurants, bars and lounges in town spent the last few days before new restrictions came into effect on Dec. 13 planning for how to carry on with no dine-in customers.
Places like Our Flames Restaurant and Lounge in Olds started its curbside pickup nearly immediately after the announcement.
Owner Prokopi (Proko) Roussakos also learned a few things from the last lockdown, initiating a sale on beer the day of the announcement.
“And we have lots of draught beer that cannot go to waste this time,” he said in a social media post announcing changes at the restaurant.
During the last dine-in shutdown in March, many establishments were left with spoiled kegs of beer because they were unable to offload them all.
The mandatory shut-down to indoor dining came just days after Grouchy Daddy’s celebrated its seventh anniversary in business.
Grouchy Daddy’s owner Alex Galanis put a callout for restaurants and small businesses to support each other during the second government-issued lockdown.
“And whether we are competition or not, many of us have kids, dreams, mortgages, or all of the above and we should never seek to bring our colleagues down or see anybody suffer. It’s the time more than ever to help one another. Share ideas. Share the worry. Share the hope and with any luck, inspire one another to get through this. So maybe instead of saying “we are all in this together,” I’m saying “we *can* be in this together,” if we just give it a try,” Galanis said in a passionate social media message.
The previous restrictions enacted in late November were hard enough trying to police, said Galanis, including the requirement that a maximum of six people from the same immediate household could be at a table with no movement between tables.
People who lived alone could meet with up to two non-household contacts as long as they were the same two through the duration of the restrictions.
“We've already had people lie to us, move tables together, yell at us, cancel reservations, hang up....the list goes on and on. We hate that we are living through this just as much as you do, and this is going to make it even harder,” he said in asking for customers’ patience at the time.
