SUNDRE — A couple of local restaurants expected to reopen dine-in services on Monday, Feb. 8, when provincial pandemic protocols were slightly relaxed to allow limited dine-in traffic.
While formerly introduced restrictions including dividers, physical distancing, sanitizing and closing at 11 p.m. will remain in place, patrons will now also be asked to provide a name and phone number to facilitate contact tracing efforts in the event of a confirmed case.
“The only difference now is we’re actually getting one person from every group to write down their address for contact tracing,” said Chris Vardas, owner of Original T’s Family Restaurant and Cedar’s Pub.
Although his family restaurant has remained open for takeout, Vardas said the last lockdown introduced just before the holidays hit much harder than the first round, and that business has been much slower this time around.
“Because there was no free money given out to the people. And then there’s Christmastime, all the bills are rolling in,” he said.
Meanwhile, as restaurants were ordered to close for dine-in service, big box stores got to stay open, he added.
“The hospitality industry — our industry — is probably the safest industry, because we’ve always sanitized our tables and everything. We’ve done everything possible. They’ve added more costs to us,” he said about the provincial government. He added there have not been provided any opportunities to recoup those additional expenses, such as installing dividers and providing hand sanitizing stations.
Yet despite the burden of paying out of pocket to comply with the provincial government’s rules, Vardas said they’ve stayed afloat — barely.
“We paid our bills. We didn’t make anything this round,” he said.
“It kept the wolves off the doorsteps, that’s all we did.”
However, he said further lockdowns in the event cases suddenly start to increase will not be survivable.
“Our industry’s taking a kicking,” he said.
“I’m hoping that this is the last time they do this to us. If they do it one more time, it kills us all.”
Over at Piros Family Restaurant, which was also set to open to dine-in customers yesterday, owner and chef George Mitsoulas shared similar sentiments, and expressed reservations about the mandatory requirement to register contact information. He plans to ask patrons to include one name and number from each group in a log book.
“That’s the part I hate. Who’s having the time to do that?” he asked.
“How much people will understand that part or not, I don’t know,” he added.
Although business dropped substantially during the second shutdown when compared with the first, he said they’ve not only managed to cover their expenses and “hold our heads above water,” but also keep a couple employees on the payroll.
And while Mitsoulas recognizes the importance of public health measures, he said, “I think the provincial government has mishandled the whole thing. To me, it would have made a lot of sense if they would have done things region by region — not treat the whole province the same way.”
Locking down a small community with no cases or a very low count as though it were an outbreak hotspot “makes no sense,” he said.
“It’s been a year, and we’ve only had a couple cases,” he said.
“Our town here, I mean, we managed to stay clean, and we’re treated the same way as Calgary or Edmonton or Red Deer. I guess it would have been too much logistics to do region by region,” he said.
“We know politicians — they don’t want to work too hard,” he added with a chuckle.
As of the end of day Feb. 7, the Sundre local geographic region had zero active COVID-19 cases, 33 recovered cases and no deaths.
