What do some of Lexington’s best restaurants have in common? COVID clusters.
When Gov. Andy Beshear announced new restrictions to curb the spike in coronavirus cases, some wondered, “why restaurants?”
But many in the industry already had a pretty good idea. Even places that take all the precautions recommended — the ones “doing it right,” as Beshear would say — have been hit by COVID.
Including some of Lexington’s top restaurants, such as Honeywood, Dudley’s on Short, Malone’s in Hamburg and Wine + Market.
In fact, since June 29 when restaurants were allowed to operate at 50 percent capacity, at least seven have had at least three employees test positive, according to the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department: Donato’s on Hartland; Dudley’s on Short; Idle Hour Country Club; Malone’s in Hamburg; McDonald’s (Hamburg-Elkhorn Rd); McDonald’s-Plaudit Place and Wine + Market on Jefferson Street.
Other restaurants have announced temporary closures due to COVID, including Chocolate Holler, Broomwagon and Joe Bologna’s.
The mask made the difference
Scher Bologna, daughter of owner Joe and manager of the popular pizza restaurant, said that they are reopening July 30 after closing abruptly earlier this month.
“It was a Saturday, and one of our employees didn’t show up. And he wasn’t the type to do that,” she said. They became concerned because they couldn’t reach him and started calling around. They found him in the hospital, where a nurse took him a phone so he could explain he had COVID. He is out of the hospital but hasn’t recovered enough to come back to work, she said.
Bologna said that everyone, including those who worked next to the employee, has tested negative.
“I’m really believing that these masks work, because it made a difference,” she said.
Now she hopes enough employees will return to keep the restaurant going.
“I do believe our customers will come back … but it’s going to be very difficult,” she said. “Everyone’s been scared away from going out in general.”
According to Beshear, at least 17 percent of the known clusters of cases in Kentucky are associated with restaurants.
He said Monday that reducing indoor restaurant capacity and closing bars was one of the things that the White House coronavirus task force headed by Dr. Deborah Birx recommended. That has had helped slow the spread in other states, Beshear said he was told.
Health department action
Not all of the restaurants with multiple cases have closed. Malone’s at Hamburg apparently stayed open, as have some of the others.
Bluegrass Hospitality Group, which operates Malone’s, said in a statement: “The team members that tested positive were all results of exposure outside of work and required precautions have been taken with those infected as well as anyone who falls under the CDC’s definition of direct contact. In addition we follow all CDC cleaning guidelines daily and have bi-weekly electrostatic sanitation.”
McDonald’s said in a statement that their locations did not close but did undergo deep cleaning after each case.
Dr. Kraig Humbaugh, Fayette County commissioner of health, said this week that they do not shut down establishments with employees who test positive.
“Like any other business, we interview the case, find out where they work, work with the employer to identify other close contacts and ask them to clean the areas where the person worked while infectious,” he said.
Employees who worked with who tests positive may be required to quarantine for 10 to 14 days, and that could leave some places so shorthanded that they can’t open, he said.
“With 3,000 cases, most restaurants have had some cases, at least one associated with it,” he said. “We’ve had many many cases related to restaurants in one way or another, staff or otherwise.”
Are restaurants and bars driving the spike in cases in Lexington?
“Some of it is probably at food establishment and some of it is elsewhere,” Humbaugh said. “It’s anywhere you go in public. … We do think it’s happening at businesses, at restaurants, at other places in the community.”
Dudley’s on Short: ‘Hardest decision’
Debbie Long, owner of Dudley’s on Short, posted the news July 8 on her restaurant’s Facebook page, saying, “To all our wonderful patrons, I want to inform you I unfortunately will need to temporarily close Dudley’s on Short. On Tuesday July 7th, one of our servers tested positive for Covid-19 and my number one concern is for the safety of our staff and our customers. Dudley’s will reopen on Thursday, July 16th. This decision was the hardest one in my 40 years of business to make, and I want to thank you for understanding.”
Dudley’s reopened with a clean bill of health. Now, as an extra precaution, the restaurant checks the temperature of patrons as they come in. No one has minded the additional step, she said.
Long said that she required employees to test negative twice before they could come back to work.
“We’ve done everything we know possible to do to ensure that guests and customers are safe. We’re doing what we’re supposed to do,” Long said. “We’re going to do what we can to comply and get through this.”
What she hopes to avoid is repeated shutdowns, which is hard on businesses with perishable inventory.
Idle Hour Country Club also was following all the CDC guidelines and using protective equipment, according to Dana Rose DiChiara, general manager for the club. But a pool employee tested positive for COVID recently. The club immediately shut down all dining, began resanitizing everywhere and arranged in-house testing of employees, she said.
“Out of that testing, three reports were returned indicating possible detection of COVID-19,” she said. All staff have now tested negative and returned to work, she said. And the dining room has reopened.
Wine + Market: ‘A brush fire’
“It cut through us like a brush fire,” said Seth Brewer, co-owner of Wine + Market, a deli and spirits shop that gleams like a magazine spread with white tile and natural light.
Brewer also is a partner in Best Friend Bar, a grungier campus-area place that “looks like hair and leather,” and Al’s Bar, a neighborhood bar that stayed open as a package store selling beer. Neither of those places has had any cases, he said.
“Wine and Market, where we’ve been wearing masks, telling people only one family member at a time ... we get it,” Brewer said.
“It just got in. We have been so careful since the very beginning. Felt a little self righteous, frankly,” he said. “Then one of the employees got a fever …”
The employee tested positive, so they sent others to get tested and closed the place as a precaution.
“I think that most folks, when they find out about cases on the team, the temptation is great to follow the health department guidelines to send them home, clean the work station and keep the lights on,” Brewer said.
Within days, more employees, who had no symptoms, also tested positive. Brewer himself tested negative ... at first.
“It was five days before it showed up,” Brewer said. “If we hadn’t shut down the store, we would have been in there, been sick and not have known. And potentially getting customers sick.”
Over the next two weeks, he said, the majority of the staff tested positive and had symptoms ranging from fever, loss of taste and smell and chest pains. All have recovered.
Wine and Market reopened this week, with new plexiglass shields and other measures.
But Brewer said the biggest lesson: Don’t get complacent.
“You let your guard down 1 percent of the time … you don’t just get 1 percent of the virus, you get 100 percent of it.”
He said that service industry attitudes will have to change. “The things you’re doing outside of work follow you into work,” so employees have to be a scrupulously careful everywhere.
But there is no way to know how he and his workers got sick, he said. “There’s no sense in finger pointing … it could have been a customer.”
‘Maybe now they’ll understand’
Chef Ouita Michel has temporarily closed two of her restaurants, Honeywood and Windy Corner Market, this week because employees have tested positive. Her restaurants are not on the health department clusters list because the cases were at separate dining spots and were not connected. But she understands the impact that COVID is having on her industry.
She said none of the employees were sick. At Honeywood, an employee’s roommate tested positive, so everyone got tested. Although the original employee didn’t have COVID, the testing turned up another employee who did.
At Windy Corner, some employees just happened to get tested. Michel said no one else has tested positive but she decided to take a pause and do a deep cleaning.
“It’s all our responsibility to do everything we can to stop it in our tracks,” Michel said.
One of her big concerns: Keeping her staff safe.
“I don’t think patrons are likely to get COVID from staff members. Contact is exceedingly brief, we’re wearing gloves and masked, with plexiglass at counters, no contact with dishes … and most of our dining is outside,” Michel said. “But if you’re working inside at a restaurant, and the capacity is going up and there’s not enough air flow … the virus can accumulate. I’m more worried about my staff than the patrons.”
Several of her restaurants, including the signature Holly Hill Inn and Wallace Station, are in older buildings, so she hasn’t resumed indoor dining there.
At Wallace Station, customers can’t even come inside to use the bathroom. At Windy Corner, they can order inside but have to eat outside.
Which has not always been popular with guests used to air conditioning.
“We have a lot of older customers who don’t want to wear masks, and they are mad that they can’t sit inside,” she said.
The hostess at Windy Corner has told her that four or five times a day she will have to remind customers to wear masks, which they provide for free.
Often the problem: Ladies who “will hold their handkerchief up to face, then drop it to talk,” she said.
When Windy Corner reopens, she said, they plan to have the sign suggested by Beshear: No shirt, no shoes, no mask, no service.
“I hope our guests finally understand we’re not trying to punish them, we’re trying to keep everybody safe,” Michel said. “Maybe they’ll get it now that we’ve had to close the restaurant.”
This story was originally published July 30, 2020 at 10:40 AM.
