MINNEAPOLIS — The Seward community has rallied around Birchwood Cafe.
They’ve sent touching letters and emails. They’ve posted inspirational comments to Instagram and Facebook (“we are so grateful for Birchwood,” one customer said last week). They’ve sent monetary donations. And they’ve bought food, thanks to curbside pickup and delivery that remains available Wednesday through Sunday.
“Its made me cry,” owner Tracy Singleton said.
Even so, Singleton’s sales are still down 60% since the COVID-19 crisis emerged almost two months ago.
“We are dealing with things as best we can. We closed a day before the governor mandated restaurants to close – we were concerned about safety,” Singleton said. “It’s a scary outlook for us, and most restaurants right now.”
Although Singleton has remained positive and said she’s committed to staying open, other restaurants in Minneapolis have decided to shut their doors for good.
Within the past week, for example, both Muddy Waters in Lyn-Lake and The Bachelor Farmer and Marvel Bar in the North Loop have announced they will not be re-opening. Eric Dayton, the co-owner of The Bachelor Farmer and Marvel Bar, posted on his website that the restaurant was “already walking a fine line before COVID-19, and given that no one knows how long the impacts of this pandemic will last, or what the new normal will be, I do not see a viable path forward.”
Hospitality Minnesota – which represents not only restaurants but also hotels, campgrounds, and resorts – shared some of those same difficult sentiments at a news conference with state officials on Monday afternoon.
“We know from our recent survey,” CEO Liz Rammer said, “that half of these businesses face certain permanent closure in the next two months on the current course.”
Rammer said she’s working closely with the Walz administration about future guidelines for reopening, which will include strict social distancing and sanitation. She said restaurants and other establishments will need plenty of advanced notice before getting the green light to open dining rooms, since there will be significant costs and training associated with the process.
“Three hundred thousand jobs in Minnesota depend on us getting it right,” Rammer said. “And they hang in the balance.”
Gov. Walz said on Monday he’s still not ready to give a definitive date, even as some other states have started to open restaurants with limited seating and other social distancing measures. He said his administration will continue to monitor the situation throughout the duration of the Stay at Home order and beyond.
“My hope was over these two weeks, you’d start to see some changes in things,” Gov. Walz said. “I’m very interested in looking at other states, at other models, to see what works on this.”
At Birchwood Cafe, Tracy Singleton said she doesn’t feel it’s safe to reopen yet. When it is, she’ll be prepared - since she’s currently working with a group of 50 other restaurant owners and chefs to develop their own set of safe practices.
“This is going to be a whole new level that we’re going to have to be working with,” Singleton said.
But she knows the new protocol will allow her to continue serving the Seward community and working with local farmers, just as Birchwood Cafe has done for the past 25 years.
“That’s a huge motivator for us to navigate this,” Singleton said, “and come through on the other side.”
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The state of Minnesota has set up a hotline for general questions about coronavirus at 651-201-3920 or 1-800-657-3903, available 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.