‘We need to get back to work.’ Kansas, Missouri restaurants, stores begin to reopen
Somebody has to go first.
So Jason Rule figured it might as well be his Corner Cafe in Riverside.
“You can either be guided by fear or be responsible and lead,” he said. “We chose as a company that we were going to be responsible and lead.”
The sprawling diner, known for giant cinnamon rolls and hearty dishes like biscuits and gravy, was among the first in the Kansas City area to reopen Monday as stay-at-home orders began to lift across the region.
Nonessential businesses in Kansas City remain closed until at least Wednesday. Jackson, Wyandotte and Johnson counties won’t allow many retailers and restaurants to reopen until May 11.
But large swaths of Kansas and Missouri reopened Monday, including Platte, Clay and Cass counties in the metro area. That meant salons, retail stores and restaurants in cities like North Kansas City, Gladstone and Liberty were able to open their doors.
At the Corner Cafe, Rule didn’t know what to expect as his family opened the first of three local locations.
He said customers still have varying views on the coronavirus pandemic — some think it’s been over hyped, while others still don’t want to leave home. But he wanted to cater to all of them.
So the restaurant worked to welcome familiar faces with new precautions. Tables were spread far apart, shared condiment containers were removed and waitresses donned cloth masks.
“It’s nice to have some form of normalcy come back,” Rule said.
In downtown North Kansas City, First Watch remained closed and Hawaiian Bros. Island Grill stuck with just take-out and curbside for now. At Jefferson’s restaurant, a table of four celebrated an upcoming 30th birthday with shots in the afternoon, but otherwise, the place was empty.
Nearby Chicken N Pickle opened to diners and had customers playing pickleball on an indoor court by lunchtime. To control social distancing, the company is taking reservations for the courts and spending at least 15 minutes between bookings to clean.
With more than half the tables and chairs removed and overall capacity significantly reduced, culinary director Alex Staab said Chicken N Pickle wouldn’t have enough traffic to turn a profit. But the restaurant wanted to provide a “clean, safe environment” for customers to get out of their houses and enjoy, he said.
To do so, employees wore masks and the company made hand sanitizer available for customers. Each table also was sanitized after each use, marked by black-and-green signs that read: “Clean. This table has been carefully cleaned, take a seat!”
One of the busiest spots in town was the driver’s license office on Burlington Street, where people spread out in the rain to wait for their turn at the counter.
At the Liberty Crossing shopping center just off Interstate 35, small groups of customers ventured into retailers like Hobby Lobby, Kirkland’s and Academy Sports + Outdoors on a day that saw downpours across the region. But some national chains in the area, like Homegoods, Bed Bath & Beyond and TJ Maxx, kept their doors closed.
Saltgrass Steak House opened up for dine-in, but only at 25% of the restaurant’s capacity. In addition to taking employee temperatures and encouraging more hand washing, the Texas-based chain allowed customers to request that servers wear face masks to their tables.
For now, Stone Canyon Pizza in Parkville and Gladstone plans to keep its dining rooms closed and continue offering only curbside and take-out on evenings and weekends.
About 30 minutes away in Holt, the only restaurant in town was still working on reopening plans since it closed its doors on March 27. Betty Garton, who owns Betty’s Place, said she didn’t make a cent last month, but she still paid her staff two-thirds of their normal wages.
Though the restaurant could reopen to partial dine-in service under Clinton County’s emergency order, she plans to reopen Wednesday, but only for carryout service.
Garton’s son made some picnic tables to allow carry-out customers to sit outside the building, but for now she said she’ll watch to see how the first phase of reopening goes before reopening the dining room.
“I have, you call it a liars table, where all the farmers all get together and sit,” she said, “and I think that’s going to be hard for them not to be able to sit there and talk and visit...But I kind of want to see how this phase goes before we start dine-in again.”
In Lawrence, few customers were walking the streets of downtown during morning storms Monday, the first day nonessential retailers could reopen in Douglas County.
“I think our community still is in the mindset where phase one — it’s a rollout,” said Brady Flannery, president of Weaver’s Department Store. “We’re going to walk before we run.”
The store has been operating as an essential business over the last few weeks. But Flannery said many local businesses, largely reliant on the University of Kansas’ academic calendar, have been struggling in recent weeks without spring mainstays like March Madness, parents’ weekends and graduation.
With limited customers allowed inside the store, most of Weaver’s sales have come from curbside and delivery orders.
“So much of what we do as retailers is — it’s about the experience,” Flannery said. “We want you to get in the dressing room. We want you to touch the fabrics. It’s all about that kind of come, be, look, touch, feel. And obviously our new normal, we won’t be encouraging those things for a little while.”
The smell of disinfectant hung in the air of the Corner Barber Shop in Northmoor, Missouri, on Monday morning as barber Lloyd Blair prepared the shop to reopen early Tuesday morning.
“We need to get back to work.” he said. “We’re at that point. It’s really hurt a lot of people.”
Blair said he was living off military disability payments after contracting cancer from what he attributed to burn pits in Iraq. But he said the owner of the two-chair shop had been struggling after he was denied both unemployment benefits and small business assistance.
With salons and barbers closed in other parts of the metro, Blair fielded many calls on Monday inquiring about the shop’s hours. It plans to stay open late in the coming days to help with the expected crush of customers, who will wait outside in their cars before their turn at the chair.
“I think for the next three or four weeks we’re going to be slammed,” he said. “That’s the only way people are going to make their money back is to go hard at it.”
At the Corner Cafe in Riverside, Rule said Monday’s reopening marked as big a moment for customers as his business.
The store was set up for about half its usual capacity. While some diners arrived as soon as the doors opened, it was far from a normal bustling weekday.
Appealing to an older crowd, Rule knows his diners are among the most at-risk. But many are widows and widowers who rely on the Corner Cafe for companionship as much as a hot meal, he said.
And he worries about the mental toll of the pandemic, particularly for those without friends and family to rely upon. That includes one regular customer whose wife lives at River Bend Post Acute Rehabilitation nursing home in Kansas City, Kansas, where an outbreak of COVID-19 has claimed 32 lives.
“He hasn’t been able to see her for months. He has no one,” Rule said. “He’s like family. I worry about people like that.”
This story was originally published May 4, 2020 at 4:35 PM.
