Restaurants limiting service hours

CLOVIS — Area restaurant owners were already seeing the impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic with the general public practicing social distancing.

Then the New Mexico Department of Health acted early this week, ordering restaurants fill no more than 50% of seating capacity, keep all tables at least 6 feet away from each other and limit party sizes.

On Monday, President Trump urged all Americans to avoid bars, restaurants, food courts and other large gathering places for the next 15 days.

Eateries, from mom-and-pops to national chains, have responded by limiting service hours, expanding carry-out and delivery options and in some cases incentivizing to-go orders with discounted or free items.

Restaurant owners in eastern New Mexico surveyed said pretty much the same thing: They were already doing their best to run clean establishments, but they understand why the mandates are in place and they’ll follow them at a minimum while striving to go above and beyond.

Local McDonald’s owner John Snowberger said Tuesday morning that based on a McDonald’s “recommendation but not a requirement,” his restaurants are closing their dining areas and only offering food via drive-thru, take-out and delivery. Previously, employees had taped off half of the tables to comply with capacity regulations and a Monday decision had been made to close the play areas before Tuesday’s decision superceded it.

“We’re doing what we’re supposed to do (with sanitizing), but we’re doing it more diligently and we’re doing it more often,” Taco Box owner Tom Martin said. “None of us want anybody to get sick, so we’re going to do what we need to do.”

Martin said he doesn’t believe mandated closures are coming, but wouldn’t be surprised to soon see a ban on dine-in. That’s already taking place in Denver, he said, and restaurants have filled customer needs with drive-thrus, delivery and take-out options.

During a Monday evening conversation where Snowberger said the restaurant would close their play areas, he noted it was tough to make public comments because the next DoH mandate could be issued right after he hangs up the phone. But whatever the mandate is, his restaurants will follow it and he has no reason to believe others won’t do the same.

“Our No. 1 concern is the safety of our customers and our employees,” Snowberger said Monday. “We would never compromise any safety concerns to make additional sales, not for a second.”

Leal has some challenges that Snowberger and Martin do not, as most of her customer base is dine-in and theirs is 70-75% drive-thru. Leal’s restaurant is rounding up staff to do delivery service as she doesn’t want to use third parties. Inside the restaurant, there are extra precautions along with taped-off tables.

“We’re sanitizing door handles every 15 minutes,” Leal said. “We’re pulling all the condiments off the table and doing single-serve. We’re making sure sick employees do not report for work.”

Foxy Drive-In owner Chris Bryant said he hopes restaurants and their employees will survive the ordeal, “but at the same time, we’ve never had an issue like this come up and we really don’t know how to deal with it to this point.”

Starbucks has announced it will remove all seating from its stores and temporarily transition to a to-go-only model starting this week. Customers can continue to order at the counter or can order ahead on the Starbucks app. Stores may temporarily close or reduce hours in areas “with high clusters of COVID-19 cases,” company officials said.

Ali Cattin, operations manager for Albuquerque-based Red Door Brewery said the measures it has taken were all implemented at the same time at its two Albuquerque locations, Clovis and Roswell. In the first few days, there was a clear difference in customer reaction; the Albuquerque patrons who had local confirmed cases completely understood and the Clovis and Roswell patrons with no confirmed cases felt the measures might be overkill. Since then, those opinions have largely aligned.

Cattin is hopeful shutdowns aren’t put in place because Red Door is a small business and “we don’t have the capacity to be out of business for weeks or months.”

A month ago, a single customer getting sick over a bad meal was a local restaurant’s biggest nightmare, and even in that circumstance one incident is unlikely to significantly impact a restaurant’s reputation or bottom line. Now, preventing virus exposure for hundreds of customers is the top goal, and the stakes are higher.

“We fully understand what they’re implementing to make sure we stay safe,” Leal said, “and we’re doing 110% our part to make sure we comply ... to serve the public to the best of our ability under the circumstances.”