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Restaurants hit hard by latest lockdown

April 22, 2021   ·   0 Comments

By Sam Odrowski and Paula Brown, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

From the outside, the end of March looked like a turning point for restaurants in Orangeville. The region had moved into the “orange” zone of the reopening framework, and warmer weather saw the possibility of an early start to the patio season.

But it was only one day into April when all restaurants had to suddenly shut down, leaving many frustrated, following months of endless reopenings and closures.

Perry Meeker, owner of the Hatter Pub on 101 First Street, said he’s taken a massive financial loss preparing to reopen his restaurant in late March, only to be shut down eight days later.

“When I invest all this money to rebuild the inventory, get staff in, make all my sauces, make all my products and be ready to go but only be open for eight days, it was incredibly frustrating,” he said.

This is the third time the Hatter has had to ramp up their reopening after being closed and each time the restaurant loses thousands of dollars in fresh products that are prepared in house.

Meeker also rented a massive tent for his outside patio, which will see no use while the current lockdown order remains in place, putting his financial losses into the tens of thousands.

He told the Citizen it was particularly disturbing when restaurants were initially closed under the current lockdown restrictions, while big box stores could still have hundreds of customers in shopping at one time.

“We’re the only industry other than gyms and hair salons, personal grooming, that did full contact tracing,” he explained. “Restaurants were one of the very few places that every person who walked in the door, their name was recorded, the time that they arrived was recorded and if there was ever any outbreak, we had all the contact details.”

Meeker said he’s happy to see Ontario finally doing a full lockdown, with all non-essential items/services restricted, but notes that it’s unfair to keep distribution centres and factories open while restaurants are closed, as that’s where the majority of COVID-19 cases are coming from.

To make things safer at the Hatter, Meeker took out 30 to 50 per cent of his tables to ensure at least six feet separation between cutomers. He also installed barricades between tables to enhance safety.

In the weeks ahead, Meeker said he’s hopeful the Hatter will welcome customer back safely, depending on the state of the pandemic.

“I’m just really looking forward to that time when we can reopen safely,” he said. “Even if it starts with the patio, I’m happy with that.”

But for some restaurants in the region, they will never reopen their doors to customers.

Brenda Grey, owner of Healthy Cravings Holistic Kitchen in Shelburne, made the decision to permanently close her café in January, after struggling through the first two shutdowns.

“I’m a café so I was meant to be a sit and enjoy a coffee, the whole experience is why I opened up the café,” says Grey, noting that her business method of farm to fresh foods didn’t translate well to the take-out option.

The stay-at-home orders, Grey says, were significantly difficult for her, as majority of her business was garnered by traffic through Shelburne.

“80 percent of my business was traffic through Shelburne, you know the weekend warriors, the people who have houses from the city going up to the cottage country,” says Grey.

Restaurant owners are not only battling the financial implications of the shutdown but also the emotional impact.

“Every single day you go in, you’re opening up and going ‘today is going to be a good day’, and it’s not a good day, and you’d have maybe out of five days have one good one – that’s hard on a business owner,” says Grey, holding back tears. “You have to think about how you pay, who doesn’t get paid, all of my small suppliers I had to pay them. I hadn’t made any money for all of 2020, I didn’t take a pay check because I had to pay everybody else except for myself.”

Grey believes this stay-at-home order will shut Main Street in Shelburne down.

Despite the struggle of the pandemic, Grey is working on revamping her business into a food truck going forward.

“With the way that things have been going, I decided because everything is take-out now, to do a food bus,” she said. “I couldn’t keep opening up my business and not having people come in.”

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