Small town pain

RITZVILLE – Small business owners and residents are again affected by COVID-19 restrictions put in place by Governor Jay Inslee Sunday, Nov. 15.

Pastime Bar and Grill owner Dave Benedict said the last shut down cost himself and fellow owner Amy Guilles $10,000 when the beer in the kegs could no longer be sold.

This time, with just two days notice from the governor’s office, Benedict and Guilles got creative, posting on social media an invitation for the community to come in and enjoy beer half off.

“Come help us tap the kegs,” the post read. “Come in and enjoy the last two days of indoor restaurant service before the lockdown.”

The community responded en masse, filling the restaurant on Monday and Tuesday evening like it was a Friday night. The Pastime crew was hopping with orders for food and drink. After the crowds thinned out and the jukebox ran out of tendered quarters, Benedict brought out his guitar and treated the remaining patrons to acoustical music.

Benedict said while he had enough savings to keep the business going for another three months with no income during this latest shutdown, he didn’t know if the business could survive much longer than that.

Benedict said he debated over keeping the restaurant open for take-out, before deciding it just didn’t pay to keep the lights on for take-out only.

Diane Kennedy, new owner of The Caddy Shack restaurant grappled with the same decision.

“After some thought, we decided we are going to shut down through this. I told some people we will deliver, but that’s not going to be possible,” Kennedy said. “2020 has been a very different year, and has brought it’s own sets of unique challenges in opening a new restaurant at the Ritzville Municipal Golf Course during a pandemic. The recent round of COVID-19 restrictions have been extremely difficult to navigate, and really afforded us only one option. The Caddy Shack has opted to close until further notice.”

Still, Kennedy keeps a hopeful outlook on the future.

“This (closure) will allow us the opportunity to re-launch the Caddy Shack, and better serve the Ritzville community,” Kennedy said.

Eagles Auxiliary member Sharon Oestreich said shutting down the Eagles Post hurts the entire community.

Oestrich said as a subsidiary of the Eagles, the post provides the Auxiliary it’s “home.”

“So we don’t have any overhead, but our job is to raise money to give it away to those in need,” Oestrich said. “We are a non-profit organization, so all of the raffles and fundraisers that we used to have; our breakfasts, everything, goes to things like the Easter Egg Hunt, the swimming pools, the theatre, the library, helping families. And with the shutdown, we have no income. As far as the Auxiliary goes, being shut down hurts the whole community.”

Oestrich said the Auxiliary’s only regular income is the breakfast they serve, and it doesn’t pay to keep the kitchen open for take-out only.

“We can’t do take-outs, because it doesn’t pay for us to keep the kitchen running and the appliances on,” Oestrich said. “You don’t make money on take-out.”

Jake’s Cafe remains open for take-out, but they’ve had to lay off staff and cut their hours back.

“It’s a drastic change, to go from having all these people to nothing,” Michelle Kultgen, a cook at Jake’s Cafe said Saturday, Nov. 21. “It’s really hard. Really, really hard.”

Kultgen, who has been with the restaurant the past five years, said the first shut down was hard, too.

“It was tough. We did a lot of cleaning, and finally we got something to auction off to bring people to come in and order,” Kultgen said. “But we’re back to that situation now. We’ll have to find something to keep people coming.”

“On a given day, if you come in here, you see at least 15 to 20 people in here. How many do you see now? Will Brown, cook at Jake’s said, as he looked around the sparkling clean, but empty restaurant. “The only time that orders come in are during lunch, usually, and dinnertime.”

“A lot of people used to come in, just to hang out,” Tara, a waitress at Jake’s said.

“A lot of people support Becky (the owner), because she’s been around a long time, she puts out a great meal and she treats everybody great. She really does,” Brown, who has 30 years in food service, said. “They’ve stated only three to five percent (of COVID-19 cases) are caused between restaurants and bars. So, they picked this particular industry to shut down to emphasize their point. We have never had a case connected to this restaurant. But I know of at least three employees who were laid off or let go from here, with the latest shutdown.”

“The governor shut us down right before the holidays, when we’re all saving up for our Christmas money and our electricity bills go up,” Tara said.

“We’re already at 50% of our business, because we die out about this time of year. So we’re running at about one fourth of our business right now. So it’s our slow time, and then take that away from us, as well. There’s no financial help for us, we’re just cut off. We can’t recover our lost tips, either. We’re just cut off.”

“And then, we’re cut back on salary, which we’re at a low end of the stack anyway,” said Brown. “So when you take that cut away from us, now we’ve got to start giving up something else. It’s hurting people all the way around.

It’s bad for the working class. And that’s the backbone of this country, is the working class. You want to punish them and tell them they can’t work?”

“Another big thing of the business is, now the truckers have nowhere to come to get out of their rigs to come in and eat. We used to have truck drivers from all the states come to this stop here,” Tara said. “It’s huge. A lot of them come in, and it’s like family. Now what are they supposed to do? Just live in their truck, eat in their truck? And they’re the ones who are bringing us our stuff. It’s kind of a big thing. It’s shut down in Oregon, too.

So now they’re hungry. They just want to get out and have a meal. There’s not that many restaurants where they can have a meal, that have truck parking. It’s mostly just the truck stops and things like that which just have sandwiches. So they’re really upset.”

Tara pointed out while the restrictions allow outdoor seating, that wasn’t a realistic option.

“Look at the wind in Ritzville and the weather. Who wants to sit outside and eat in the freezing wind? The cold, dusty wind,” Tara said. “We talked about it, do we want to put one of those heaters out there? But the wind. And building outdoor seating would be more expense right now.”

“A person has a choice whether they want to come in or not. That’s a freedom, and that’s a constitutional right,” Brown said.

He also pointed out the additional expense that comes with take-out.

“We have to package everything now in all the to-go containers, and that adds an overhead cost,” said Brown. “So now we’re suffering added costs to stay open with less business.”

“We were 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., and now we’re 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.,” Tara said. “So we all lost two and a half hours a day, and that adds up to over 40 hours every month.”

“Now is when we need America standing together, and not apart,” Brown said. “We can’t have our governors and our state officials dividing us, because it is going to affect the country in the long-term. I saw in the news that 60% of the small businesses closed will not re-open. Now, you pass that down the line, and that is an economical disaster.”

The closing of the H.E. Gritman Senior Center to in-door dining has had not only economic, but social consequences.

“We love our people, and they love coming. That’s their social time, so this is really hard on them,” Joyce Preston, who delivers meals, said. “We did everything we had to, with social distancing. But they still shut us down.”

“It just makes me sick,” Sandi Miller, cook at the Gritman Center said. “We have our regulars who come in, and it is a social time that’s very important to them. Our orders have gone way down. We deliver meals, but the coming in and socializing was a very import aspect for them.”

Judi Renner, senior center board member and Adams House resident, agreed.

“Yes, that’s the best part of it. They are definitely right,” Renner said. “If some of us don’t order meals to go, like when it was shut down the first time, she (the cook) didn’t have a job,” Renner said. “The president took it upon herself to just close it down. Sandi said she would deliver, but she didn’t listen to her. This time, she’s listening to Sandi and is keeping it open. I told her I think we should keep it open, or we’re going to lose our cook. And I’m afraid of that. And this is why I go down and I get mine everyday, and anybody else’s here at Adams House. She’s just such a good cook.”

“The last time they shut us down, our funds became very minimal,” Preston said.

After being closed for eight months, The Ritz theater was advertising noon matinee showings of The Grinch Dec. 5 and 12.

John Rankin, manager, said he was just getting ready to reopen the theater when Inslee made his announcement of the latest lockdown.

“I had my last bit of COVID stuff ready to be checked out by the Adams County Health District,” said Rankin. The theater, owned by the nonprofit Ritzville Downtown Development Association, had received a grant from the Innovia Foundation to purchase COVID relief supplies including a touch-less credit card reader, directional arrows, four hand sanitizer dispensers and sanitizer.

Rankin said he did not anticipate re-opening in 2020.

“There’s still only about a half dozen new movies out,” Rankin said. “We are done thinking about re-opening for the year.”