Coronavirus Florida: Some restaurant changes are here to stay - Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Now that restaurants are allowed to reopen at limited capacity, some in the Sarasota-Bradenton area said that the COVID-19 precautions they put in place are here to stay.

C’est La Vie on Main Street in Sarasota never had much use for app-based delivery services.

The restaurant, known for its pastry and coffee counter that greets customers when they walk inside, and for sit-down breakfast service on the sidewalk, has used downtown Sarasota foot traffic and word of mouth to build goodwill and a reputation in the community over nearly 30 years to propel its business.

But that changed in March, when restaurants were allowed to deliver or switch to to-go only as a safety precaution during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Owner Christophe Coutelle said that he and his wife and co-owner, Geraldine, were working 18 hour days once the economic ripples of the virus started to hit Sarasota, trying to figure out how they would continue.

But they adapted. They teamed with Uber Eats and DoorDash to offer delivery. They started offering curbside pickup service right on Main Street. And they added a dinner menu to their signature breakfast and lunch, bringing the chef from their other restaurant, Lolita Tartine in the Rosemary District, to C’est La Vie.

Even though they’re now allowed to operate at 25% capacity, Christophe Coutelle said they’re planning on keeping the to-go service. And he’s not the only one.

Sarasota-Manatee restaurants have been forced to adjust to survive the economic collapse caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Michael’s on East started “Michael’s at Home,” a menu complete with optional wine pairings. Others, like Patrick’s 1481, slimmed down the menu for to-go only and started delivering within a limited radius.

Many local eateries said some of the adjustments they’ve made during COVID-19 will remain for the foreseeable future.

When restaurants were ordered to shift to to-go only in mid-March, Anna Maria Oyster Bar in Manatee County initially stayed open for a week. But owner John Horne said he ultimately determined it would be best to keep the staff of his four Bradenton area locations safe at home.

He was able to do that with the help of Paycheck Protection Program funds from the U.S. Small Business Administration. With those funds, the company was able to pay its staff of 335 people at seasonal rates for seven weeks, or a total weekly payroll cost of about $202,000.

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But the company still stayed busy, even during downtime. There’s a QR code at the front of each Anna Maria Oyster Bar restaurant that will take people directly to the webpage for the restaurant’s menu on their phones, so they don’t have to handle a paper menu.

The restaurant has also partnered with Nowait, the Yelp-owned app that allows people to get on the wait lists for their favorite restaurants without leaving the house. And employees, including servers, bussers and kitchen staff, are all wearing masks.

New point-of-sale devices that allow customers to swipe their credit cards without touching anything were installed. The devices also print to-go orders in a separate area of the kitchen.

“We’ve got two people doing nothing but to-go food,” Horne said. “We have new packaging that travels better and is more eco-friendly. It keeps the food as close to dining room fresh as possibly can.”

Still, Horne, like many other restaurateurs, said he has a feeling that people are going to be eating at home a lot more often than before COVID-19.

“We know it’s going to be slow for a bit. There are a lot of people not wanting to be inside a restaurant and a lot of people saying, ”I gotta get out of my house,’“ Horne said. ”Our elderly population needs to be careful before they get around crowds. There’s still COVID out there — it didn’t disappear. People still need to be careful.“

A lot of being careful is about retraining not just the staff but the customers about what it’s like to eat out in the new normal.

Christine Nordstrom, owner of Five-O Donut Co. on Ringling Boulevard in Sarasota, said that for curbside pickup, she’s had to emphasize to customers that they need to call ahead. It’s the same for the donut shop that it would be at a restaurant, she said.

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“What people kept doing was pulling up, sitting out front and calling us,” she said. “They weren’t grasping the concept that curbside here is the same as it would be at a restaurant.”

Retraining regular Five-O customers, who are used to lining up one after the other outside the shop on the weekends, was also a challenge. Nordstrom said she had two staffers stationed out front making sure people stayed in their cars until it was their turn to come out.

Now people are allowed to line up outside of the store, Nordstrom said, but she’ll still only let three people in the shop at a time.

“As a business owner, you have a responsibility to staff as well as customers. I learned that very early on,” she said.

Nordstrom also did something she thought she would never do — partnered with delivery apps like Uber Eats, Bite Squad, DoorDash and Grubhub. She thought she would never do that, because the apps take a percentage of the sale price, but at the same time, the apps do come pre-loaded with thousands of customers who have never heard of Five-O before.

“Bite Squad called yesterday and they placed a $250 order, they came and picked up 10 dozen donuts and delivered to essential businesses,” she said. “It’s been a good change. We just get overwhelmed sometimes if we get too many delivery orders in.”

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