COVID-19 has taken its toll on restaurants across the province and forcing a South Shore restaurant to make a tough decision to close.
After what was described by her as ‘many sleepless nights,’ Dawn Ewing, former owner of Diner 325 in Bridgewater decided to permanently close the restaurant’s doors this week.
Ewing said a number of factors related to the pandemic led to the restaurant’s closure, including being unable to properly staff the diner, which left her and other staff working nearly 80 hours per week.
“I walked into the restaurant one day and looked at the schedule and I was like ‘we just can’t do this,’” explained Ewing. “Me and the other cook were working six days a week from open to close.”
She said before the pandemic hit, she had about 12 staff members, some of which left the industry all together after the first COVID-19 shutdown.
As the pandemic progressed, Ewing said she would have ideally had seven or eight staff members working for her, but eventually she was left with just three, adding she had been trying to find more staff for months.
“I literally put a plea out of Facebook asking several times for help and I had two applications the whole time that I was looking for people,” explained Ewing.
She adds the public’s response to her plea for help wasn’t well received.
“The public was looking for higher wages, which is something not all of us are able to offer.” said Ewing
Ewing believes many people may be expecting more due to government relief programs providing money that may have been more than what some were used to making.
She explained her business took a massive hit due to pandemic restrictions, limiting the amount of customers able to come into restaurant, saying even once restaurants were allowed to reach full capacity, social distancing was hard to maintain in a small area which made maintaining a six foot distance impossible to achieve on busier days.
“We had lots of customers but we had to turn them away at times,” explained Ewing. “They were sitting in their cars waiting for us to have a table and it’s hard to make money when your customers are sitting outside and they can’t come in.”
Ewing feels government support for small business was also lacking.
“We had options for wage subsidies and rent subsidies but those are based on how much you make.” Ewing said, “If I’m turning customers away because I have nowhere for them to sit, I’m not making the money for the government to support me.”
She said she did try switching to take out, but believes that was unsuccessful because people turned to fast food franchises and pizza shops rather than diner food.
Ewing said those factors eventually led her to make the heartbreaking decision to close Diner 325, August 29.
“It was really hard at first, but when I finally locked the door, I kind of breathed a sigh of relief because I knew the sleepless nights were over and I knew the struggle was over,” said Ewing. ” I keep telling myself that my dream isn’t dead, I’m going to do it again in the future, just not right now.”
Ewing believes many other restaurants in communities across the province have been struggling in similar ways and hopes that no more restaurant’s suffer the same fate as hers.
