Family Restaurant Goes All Out To Feed Employees as Indoor Dining Ban Kicks In
A family-owned Kentucky restaurant donated a massive sum to its employees the day before Dem Gov. Andy Beshear forced the closure of all indoor-dining spots to suppress the spread of COVID-19.
The governor issue mandated closure on Nov. 18, requiring that all indoor-dining restaurants in Kentucky close their doors to diners until Dec. 13, in order to prevent a further surge in coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
The news came as a shock to many local restaurateurs, who will no doubt continue struggling to make ends meet, hit hard by previous coronavirus-related lockdowns. American restaurants reportedly lost $120 billion in sales during the first three months of the pandemic — a number that is likely to rise during the busy holiday season.
One restaurant, however, sought to put its employees first and give an early Christmas gift to those who would be out of work as a result of more recent lockdown efforts. On Friday, Jeff Ruby Culinary Entertainment invited their loyal customers to one last dine-in experience before the mandate came into effect. The best part? One hundred percent of the proceeds from the evening were donated to employees at the chain’s Lexington and Louisville locations.
“Per @AndyBeshearKY’s mandate, all restaurants in KY will be closed for dine-in starting tomorrow,” read a posting on the restaurant’s official Twitter account.
“100% OF TONIGHT’S SALES in LX and LV will be donated to our amazing employees in #Lexington & #Louisville.”
Per @AndyBeshearKY‘s mandate, all restaurants in KY will be closed for dine-in starting tomorrow.
100% OF TONIGHT’S SALES in LX and LV will be donated to our amazing employees in #Lexington & #Louisville. Make plans to join us or place an order at https://t.co/i7YA8I9xnG! pic.twitter.com/GFIa9EdsTf
— Jeff Ruby Culinary Entertainment (@RubyCulinary) November 19, 2020
At the end of the night, grateful Jeff Ruby’s workers were collectively given a total of $60,000, according to Fox News.
Jeff Ruby’s CEO Britney Miller told Fox News that the governor’s order came “without warning” and with no relief plan for those who would be put out of work.
“Congress right now is dragging their feet. They need to put politics aside. We need both the Senate and the House to come together and to get negotiations started,” Miller said.
“To not have any relief for employees right now, for people who do get furloughed or laid off and to not have any sort of unemployment plan in place for those folks — especially during the holidays — is heartbreaking.”
“And so, it’s just frustrating. We’re being singled out,” she added.
Fellow restaurant owners in the area were quick to echo Miller’s sentiments, drafting an online petition to Gov. Beshear, which impored him to rescind the order. The petitioners alleged restaurants had been made to endure the worst of what the pandemic had to offer financially, while shopping centers and gyms remain open.
Several research institutions, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have labeled restaurants as hot-spots for viral transmission. The lack of social distancing and mask-wearing, experts claim, contributes greatly to the spread in those areas.
The CDC defended their stance on the food industry’s role in the transmission of COVID-19 in a September report, writing that “masks cannot be effectively worn while eating and drinking, whereas shopping and numerous other indoor activities do not preclude mask use”.
The National Restaurant Association has challenged this assumption in defense of restaurant owners and workers.
In a recent video statement the special interest claimed that “absent contact tracing and public health data determining who among the groups actually contract the virus and without a higher level of specificity to where they contracted it, using a modeling exercise with anonymized location data pulled from mobile devices is not an acceptable way to determine that restaurants are a likely cause for virus transmission.”
Despite its best efforts, many states are continuing to implement drastic lockdown measures, including the closure of local restaurants and small businesses. Miller worries that laid-off workers and owners in an industry that employs 10 percent of the U.S. workforce, may not be able to stay afloat.
It remains unclear whether these severe restrictions will be lifted on, or before, Dec. 13. Until then, the restaurant employees of Kentucky wait with bated breath and look to Congress for a long-awaited second round of federal relief legislation.
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