in Chatsworth, Grey Highlands, Southgate, West Grey
January 31, 2022
BY SOUTHGREY.CA STAFF — Today, restaurants and bars will be allowed to open for indoor dining at 50% capacity. As they get set to welcome customers again, their sacrifices up to this point under various government regulations and restrictions should be recognized.
From contact tracing, sanitizing stations, extra PPE, cleaning regimens and table dividers, to extra staff and scanning devices for vaccine passports, Ontario restaurants have been forced to enact many COVID-19 protocols over the last two years. They have also endured a roller coaster of business closures through wave after wave of spiked case counts. Many of these businesses are financially tapped, tired and stressed-out, as they try to stay open and remain viable.
Caption: Kitchen staff at The Burger Guru opened their doors during the height of the Omicron wave this January.
Through no fault of their own, they have felt the brunt of this pandemic and unwittingly held the front lines against anti-vaccine-passport protests and political vitriol.
"We have tried to be positive all along the way, but the truth is, we are extremely frustrated!" says a Facebook post from Queen's Bush Pub in Hanover on Thursday, January 20. "Its been two years of literal insanity — open then closed, open then closed, open then closed... all with the same end result.”
During the pandemic, Queen’s Bush Pub built an extensive outdoor patio in their parking lot to accommodate patrons while adhering to COVID-19 protocols.
The grief experienced by our local restaurants, cafés and bakeries throughout this pandemic is real. It should elicit sympathy from the vast majority of us.
In truth, Grey County has an over-abundance of great food, terrific chefs and amazing places to eat! If you stand with them, then let's show them some love as we try and plot a path back to normalcy this Spring and Summer!
Tell us your favourite local Grey County food haunts and enter to win a $50 gift certificate from your choice of top picks.
On Valentine's Day — Monday, February 14 — we will announce our readers top three choices under twelve foodie categories.
At South Grey News, we endeavour to bring you truthful and factual, up-to-date local community news in a quick and easy-to-digest format that’s free of political bias. We believe this service is more important today than ever before, as social media has given rise to misinformation, largely unchecked by big corporations who put profits ahead of their responsibilities.
South Grey News does not have the resources of a big corporation. We are a small, locally owned-and-operated organization. Research, analysis and physical attendance at public meetings and community events requires considerable effort. But contributions from readers and advertisers, however big or small, go a long way to helping us deliver positive, open and honest journalism for this community.
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