Soon after W.Va. Gov. Jim Justice announced restaurants and bars in the Mountain State could once again welcome 100 percent occupancy into their businesses, Wheeling restaurant owner Matt Welsch posted on Facebook his frustration with the balancing act of keeping his patrons safe and allowing a full house.
Welsch, known as the “Vagabond Chef” and the owner of the Vagabond Kitchen in downtown Wheeling, deleted the post a little later, but he remains bothered with the balancing act involved with utilizing all of his tables all of the time in an approximately 1,500 square-foot dining room.
“When I heard that the governor increased the occupancy to 100 percent, but that social distancing was still necessary, it made me very frustrated,” Welsch admitted. “That is a very difficult statement to hear, and here’s why. It shows just how out of touch these people are as far as what we’ve been going through because when we are at capacity, people are sitting three feet from each, not six feet.
“And when that is increased to six feet, it become a very simple math problem,” he said. “Three feet to six is double, right? But if there has to be six feet of social distancing, well, that puts us right back at 50 percent. There’s no way to change that because it’s very simple math, and it just doesn’t make sense. It’s mathematically and physically impossible.”
The Trust Factor
After customers depart the Vagabond Kitchen, staff members wipe down the tables and the chairs, and the same goes for an occupied bar area. Menus are sanitized along with doorknobs, and the silverware is blasted by scalding water once removed from a table.
Welsch describes his approach to cleanliness at the Vagabond Kitchen as, “hyper-sensitive” because he wishes for his patrons to feel a confidence in him and his staff when it comes possible exposure to Covid-19. When the pandemic began, Welsch and other restaurant owners in Ohio and West Virginia were limited to take-out and curb-side services, and bars were completely shut down.
No one, including Welsch, wishes to return to a similar situation.
“When it comes to safety, we have been doing everything recommended because I have to trust someone from somewhere. I’m not a doctor, and I’m not a scientist, so I have to listen to the people who are,” Welsch said. “That’s why it’s especially frustrating when what those people tell us just doesn’t make any sense.
“We have a great clientele at the Vagabond Kitchen, and by far most of them have been wearing a mask into the restaurant and they only take it off after they have been seated,” he said. “If someone has a problem with wearing a mask, I get it, but that means they shouldn’t come see us because we have to make sure our customers are following the rules because we don’t want to get shut down like some other places have been.”
Trust Is a Two-Way Street
Officials with the federal Center of Disease Control and Prevention advised Americans from the very beginning to socially distance at least six feet, to repeatedly wash our hands and use sanitizer, too, and to properly wear a mask that covers a person’s mouth and nostrils.
It is all about a person’s respiratory particles, those officials have insisted for nearly a year, and the distance is supposed to protect against exposure, and the mask prevents the spread. While W.Va. Gov. Jim Justice loosened occupancy restrictions, he has kept other precautions in place without true enforcement, in the chef’s opinion.
“Small businesses and especially restaurant owners have been thrown under the bus throughout this whole process,” Welsch explained. “We get told we have to enforce these rules, but we don’t get any backing for them, and it’s been such a politicized, opinionated situation. Everyone has their own opinions about how things should be, and people get upset when you ask them to wear their mask.
“It all falls on the business owner and their employees to enforce these rules and that’s made it a very frustrating time,” he continued. “We have gone to great lengths to be the place that people can trust when they are looking for a place where there can be some sense of normalcy. And that’s needed right now because of the mental health aspect of this whole situation, but the state has made us the bad guys.”
