Carver Brewing Co. is closing, Steamworks Brewing Co. is offering to-go foods from its sliding front windows, Zia Taqueria is allowing no more than five people at a time through its cafeteria-style line for takeout.
Restaurants across Durango and Southwest Colorado adjusted to a new reality Tuesday. On Monday evening, Gov. Jared Polis’ office issued a news release announcing the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment had implemented a 30-day suspension of dine-in service at restaurants to begin 8 a.m. Tuesday morning. The ban is meant to slow the spread of the coronavirus in the state.
For Durango, which likes to boast more restaurants per capita than San Francisco, the directive is a punch in the gut.
For a time, The Strater Hotel’s restaurants – The Mahogany Grille, The Office Spiritorium and The Diamond Belle Saloon – remained open with reduced capacity at the restaurants. About half the tables had been removed to maintain a 6-foot distance.
But Rod Barker, owner of the hotel, said his understanding of the order is that restaurants attached to inns were exempt from the public health order. But after a visit from “a very rude” city of Durango employee, he said he decided to close all three operations and open some type of to-go operation, a path followed by many other Durango restaurants.
“We had worked hard to reduce the capacity at the restaurants and to maintain a clean environment. When you compare the Diamond Belle to City Market, I think we’re absolutely safer. I was in City Market just a few hours ago, and they weren’t wiping down the checkout stands. When you compare where you are safer, I think you are a lot safer at the Diamond Belle than City Market,” he said.
Claire Ninde, spokeswoman with San Juan Basin Public Health, said the department informed Barker that his interpretation that eateries attached to inns were exempt from the order was not the view of the local health department.
Ninde said SJBPH was working with the city of Durango and other entities to determine who would actually enforce the 30-day ban if a restaurant was noncompliant, but she added as of Tuesday evening no agency was sure who would act to enforce the ban if necessary.
Barker said his effort to keep the restaurants open was based on information from the Colorado Hotel and Lodging Association and was aimed chiefly at helping his employees.
“It’s kind of critical for us to keep our employees at work. We have employees, who if they are without work for a number of weeks, will leave town. They need to buy groceries and pay rent, and we’re doing everything we can to keep them employed.”
The Strater is taking inventories of items such as antique light bulbs, linens, china and other items in an effort to keep employees busy. Barker said in the last few weeks, the inn has seen about $100,000 worth of cancellations.
“This is the toughest situation I have seen in 40 years of operating the Strater,” he said.
After Barker had decided to close the three Strater restaurants, he said, “I don’t think a one-size-fits-all policy is very effective, and I thought this was an opportunity for the community to learn at a local level and not listen to all the bigwigs and muckety-mucks up there whose solutions are not necessarily the right ones in every location. I was trying to do something more effective than what is commonly out there.”
“I have 140 employees. If they can’t pay rent, where do they go?”
Most other dine-in services at restaurants, brewpubs, coffeehouses and just about any other business came to a halt at 8 a.m. Tuesday as the order became effective.
At Carver Brewing Co., employees were bagging produce, eggs and meat – any items that would spoil in the next month. The food will be given to employees to hold them over for the next month. Jim Carver, co-owner, estimated the restaurant had 300 pounds of potatoes and 5,000 eggs it was giving to employees.
Carver said 75 employees will be laid off, hopefully for only the next month.
The employees will be listed as unemployed with a job attached, meaning they will have a job waiting for them at the end of the COVID-19 closure.
“We’re planning to be closed for 30 days, but we really don’t know,” Carver said. “In Denver, the mayor ordered restaurants closed for 60 days.”
Carver said he thought about opening as a to-go operation, but he said it was unfeasible for a restaurant used to serving 800 people a day to go down to serving only 50 or 60 people with to-go orders.
“We’re OK. We’re fine. But this is going to hurt a lot of restaurants who aren’t as established as we are. We’re the children of Depression-era parents. We own our buildings. We’ll weather this,” he said.
In Polis’ news release, he reiterated the goal of flattening the curve to stop the spread of the virus.
“It’s not going to be easy, but the more seriously we take this public health emergency, the better we can weather the storm and get through this crisis with as little damage as possible.” Polis said.
The ban on dine-in services applies to restaurants, coffeehouses, brewpubs, breweries, microbreweries, distillery pubs, wineries, tasting rooms, clubs, taverns, restaurants, food courts, cafes, cigar bars, gyms, gymnasiums, theaters, casinos, movie and performance theaters, opera houses, concert halls and other similar places of public accommodation offering food or beverage for on-premises consumption.
The health department encouraged restaurants and others to offer food and beverages using a delivery service, window service, walk-up service, drive-thru service or drive-up service.
Restrictions do not apply to places of public accommodation that offer food and beverage not for on-premises consumption and any emergency facilities necessary for the response to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak.
Colorado’s Unemployment Insurance Division is responding to questions from employers and workers affected by closures as a result of the coronavirus. Employees who see a reduction in hours or layoffs are encouraged to apply for unemployment benefits, which can provide partial wage replacement, at www.colorado.gov/cdle/unemployment.
Employers may also be eligible for programs to avoid layoffs like Colorado’s Work Share program, which allows employers to split the cost to retain employees with unemployment insurance.
Even before the health department order was issued, Steamworks Brewing Co., El Moro Spirits and Tavern and Bird’s announced that in-house dining would be discontinued beginning Wednesday. Takeout via sidewalk delivery will be offered at all three locations from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.
For takeout, food can be ordered from any of the restaurants and picked up at open front windows at Steamworks and El Moro, or through Bird’s drive-thru.
“To-go is not our specialty. There will definitely be a learning curve,” said Ryder Okumura, a front-end manager at Steamworks.
Currently, the entire menu at Steamworks is available for takeout, but that may change over time as the restaurant adjusts to the new environment, Okumura said. The restaurant is even offering the sale of canned beers for consumption at home out of its sliding windows.
Kris Oyler, co-founder and CEO of Peak Food & Beverage, which owns Steamworks, El Moro and Bird’s in Durango, said, “We feel like by offering to-go we can help the community. Grocery stores are under so much pressure.”
Going from serving about 1,000 people a day to operating as a to-go operation will include a learning curve, Oyler said.
Okumura noted Bird’s is set up with to-go orders as a more central part of its concept, and experience from Bird’s should help Steamworks adjust.
“We take the physical well-being of our teams and community very seriously, and (Tuesday morning) made the difficult decision to suspend in-house dining until further notice after Tuesday’s dinner service,” he said.
Peak Food & Beverage, with 300 total employees, is the largest restaurant and tavern employer in town, and unemployment compensation will be used to help employees who are laid off. Oyler said 50 employees have been retained to help with the to-go operations.
“We want to support the community, but our first allegiance is to our employees,” Oyler said. “We’ll do what we can as long as we can, and stand together to get through this situation.”
“This is completely a fluid situation. But we want our patrons to still be able to enjoy our great food, even if we’re all being advised to be socially distant,” Oyler said.
Brice Ward, general manager at 81301 Coffee, said he is allowing no more than five people in the shop at a time to get coffee and pastries to go and working to maintain a 6-foot distance.
“We’re figuring out hours, we’re figuring out a lot of things. It’s like operating a whole new business, and it’s not day-to-day, it’s hour-to-hour,” he said.
People often come into coffeehouses to sit and chill for a while. It’s difficult, he said, to tell customers who haven’t heard about the dine-in ban that they can’t sit at a table.
“All restaurants have small margins. Now, we have no margins. So we have things to figure out. I’ve written six mock schedules today,” Ward said.
Lucas Webster, general manager of Zia Taqueria north, said the restaurant’s cafeteria-style ordering process lends itself to a to-go operation, and the restaurant is open with a full menu. It is allowing no more than five people in the restaurant an any one time to fill to-go orders.
“We figure if we can keep customers happy and fed, it’s a win for them, a win for the community and a win for Zia Taqueria,” he said.
So far, Zia Taqueria has not laid off any of its 18 employees, but that is something the restaurant will have to examine with sales expected to decline.
“At this point, everything is day-to-day. We have to see how the community reacts, and what our sales look like,” Webster said. “We’re hearing from people who think all restaurants are closed, and that’s not true. At Zia, we’re well-situated for to-go orders, but that doesn’t mean sales won’t dip because people are holed up in their house because they are afraid of going out and making contact.”
On Tuesday morning, Ben Fisher, chef and co-owner of the Absolute Bakery and Cafe in Mancos, was adjusting to the brave new world of operating a restaurant during the COVID-19 outbreak.
“We heard about this late last night, and we got together and we decided we needed to figure out how to make this work for us and the community,” Fisher said as he filled out a white board explaining new procedures for food pickup at the popular Mancos restaurant.
The Absolute had created a pickup station where patrons could collect their phone-in and online orders.
“We’re going to make this work. We’re looking at changing the menu to feature family meals like enchiladas, shepherd pies, soups and salads,” Fisher said. “We’re working with the schools to provide food to low-income students. Even if we don’t make money on it, we’ll be able to get rid of stock. I think we’re going to see the best of community in the next couple of weeks.”
Fisher’s white board noted the ABC’s already-portable offerings like breakfast wraps and sandwiches, and quiches.
“We’re communicating with the community on Facebook. And I think we’re going to learn from this and come out better in the end.” he said. “We’ll learn from the community about what they like. We’ll learn what works on the menu. We’ll learn what works best as takeout.”
parmijo@durangoherald.com
Pickup & Delivery
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