Earlier this year efforts to contain the pandemic forced central Illinois restaurants to change the way they do business.
“The restaurant business has been in our family for 53 years and there’s been nothing like this,” said Dustin Allen, owner of the Edge restaurant in Peoria Heights, referring to the impact of the coronavirus this spring.
Allen, like other restauranteurs, faced a stark reality. His dining room was closed, a big change “when you’re used to the hustle and bustle all night long,” he said.
While the restaurant was idle, Allen and his staff weren’t. “We must have written 100 different business plans,” he said.
“We learned how to do carry-out,” said Allen, explaining that meant acquiring the proper containers and other materials that the eatery had never used before. There was also a need to incorporate new menu items for the take-out effort, he said.
Mike Phelan, as the mayor of Peoria Heights, the village that houses the Edge and a number of other restaurants, had a front-row seat on his community’s reaction to the pandemic.
“Business owners have had to improvise, “ said Phelan, noting that firms had to answer questions such as: “How do we do delivery? How do we do curbside service? How do we add tables outside?”
“Businesses had to think outside the box,” he said, adding that the Heights business development district moved quickly to assist individual businesses with up to $1,500 during the crisis.
With only outside dining permitted at present, Phelan said retail businesses have been cooperating in the Heights by allowing restaurants to add tables in front of their locations.
Tristan Popadziuk, who heads up the CxT Roasting Co. in Peoria, faced the problem of running a gathering place like a coffee shop when you can’t let people gather due to the virus.
CxT has two locations in Peoria—one a small shop in the Downtown across from the Peoria County Courthouse while the other is a larger venue in the new Keller Station development near the Rock Island Trail in northern Peoria.
While the downtown shop undergoes renovations (“We’re taking out some of the retail space in favor of more tables”), the Keller Station location adapted to curbside service, said Popadziuk.
The transition to curbside-only was slow in the beginning, he said of efforts to deliver coffee without the normal coffee-shop ambience.
“It’s been crazy coming in and seeing no one in here with the tables all upside down,” said Popadziuk.
Both Popadziuk and Allen think they may be stronger coming out of the pandemic than they were going in. “We have a pretty streamlined model now,” said Popadziuk, referring to online ordering by customers.
CxT is still working on issues such as when orders get backed up when the shop is “slammed,” he said.
Allen plans to soon open a rooftop bar and restaurant—with a reduced menu including burgers—at his location in the Heights.
With all 17 employees ready to return, Allen said he expects to add 10 to 15 positions when the restaurant gets to reopen for inside dining.
Restaurants can find help on developing a carry-out service from the University of Illinois Extension Service who recently organized a webinar to assist restaurant operators in adjusting service as a result of the pandemic.
Carter Phillips of the U of I’s department of food science and human nutrition said restaurant operators need to analyze their menus for profitability, popularity and the ability to travel.
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