Local restaurant preps for big turnout memorial day weekend

STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) — Memorial Day is right around the corner. For most people that means backyard barbecues and family get-togethers.

This year, some people want to get away from home cooking. That’s why restaurant owners need to be prepared to accommodate high volumes while also social distancing.

The doors are open, and customers are placing orders table side, but only at 50% capacity.

“Well we’re doing social distancing, we’ve got the tables 6 feet apart and we are doing hand sanitizing at the door and making sure everything stays clean and neat and organized and sanitizing the tables in between each and every people that come in and sit down,” said Bruce Miller, the General Manager at 1883 Smokehouse. “Making sure everything is just clean and kept clean and organized.”

Miller came up with the idea of a buffet so the restaurant and its customers could continue social distancing but in an efficient way.

And Sunday was their first day to put it to use.

“Our buffet is set up and designed to where the employees actually fix the plates for our customers,” said Miller. “The customers do not touch anything on the buffet other than the plate when they receive it at the buffet, and it’s been going very well so far for our first-day run.”

The buffet was so efficient, they are going to continue using it.

“Memorial Day, we are going to have the buffet running,” said Miller. “I’ll have extra staff on hand to do whatever we need to do to make our customers feel comfortable and make sure we are keeping our social distancing and also sanitizing in place to where our people just feel comfortable about coming out and eating with us.”

Even though the restaurants have reopened, managers say they still have a long way to go before the business is back to where it was before the closure.

“It been moderate, we’ve been well blessed with people coming out and supporting us throughout the hard times of this pandemic we have had,” said Miller. “Were starting to get more and more people coming in as the days go by.”

Starting this Saturday night, 1883 will be having their first-ever seafood buffet and will be offering a catfish Friday as well.

They also plan on offering a midday buffet on Sundays.