“This side’s more designed to expand the takeout experience.. so when people are going to be coming here, this is going to be a room where they can wait safely at a social distance,” he said.
Zoe Olson is the Executive Director of the Nebraska Restaurant Association and said it was quite a year for the restaurant industry: from closed dining rooms, restricted capacities, to using government loans to stay open and more.
“I’ll never forget getting a call from one of my members that said, I have $20,000 worth of food for St. Patrick’s Day, in my restaurant right now, what am I going to do? And I can only have 10 people at a time in my restaurant, when normally my facility would be packed. What do I do?” she said. “That was the kind of thing that we had to address and change on a dime. The restaurant industry has been incredibly flexible and that that was a huge shock for people that they had all this product and no place to sell it.”
Bill Lesko is the owner of Citta’ Deli in McCook in southwest Nebraska and said March 2020 was a time of panic for his restaurant.
“Sheer panic, honestly.. what a surprise and a shock. It was something we definitely were not prepared for, as I don’t believe anybody really could have been prepared for,” he said. “We haven’t experienced anything like it before. You know, ‘How are we going to stay in business?’ was on our mind.”
Zoe Olson said up to 31% of Nebraska restaurants could close permanently, according to their most recent survey with the National Restaurant Association.
“During the dining room shut down, some of our restaurants were down in sales up to 94%, so they were only doing about 6% of their business,” she said. “Some restaurants fared better if they had a drive thru.”
Mac’s Drive-In in Red Willow County in southwest Nebraska is one of those restaurants that embraced drive thru orders.
Owner Tyler McCarty said they were fortunate to have several car hop stalls that allowed the business to serve food in a safe and comfortable manner to customers.
“We just saw our customer patterns change and we adapted to that and actually ended up having a pretty decent year, which is crazy in spite of everything that happened,” he said.
Dining and Cooking