A new wave of Toronto restaurants have announced they're closing temporarily in light of Ontario's new stay-at-home orders.
Many restaurants have chosen to voluntarily go on hiatus since the pandemic began, and sadly some of them have never reopened or have announed their permanent closure.
Hopefully that won't be the case for a handful of businesses that have opted to shut down all operations temporarily in the last few days.
Elizabeth Rohrich at Noble Coffee, which temporarily closed since Jan. 12, feels they're in a good position to encourage people to hunker down for a brief period and "didn't want to reorder new product and be sitting on inventory." Closed for a winter break up until Jan. 11, the business was only open two days before closing down again.
"Concerned about our community and staff taking the TTC, hospitals getting jammed up, we decided to do our part, and hopefully that encourages others to stay home too," Rohrich told blogTO.
"We feel the Ontario government has really left it up to the individual with this stay home, 'go to work' order. We made it through when we closed for three months in the beginning, we hope the numbers go down and we open in 28 days again. COVID only spreads person to person, so we hope persons are staying home."
Sibling business to Noble, bar Gaslight, has also been on a break and decided not to reopen their bottle shop for now, though according to a social media post they're working on delivery options.
Rose and Crown has been battling valiantly throughout the pandemic, even putting out a public call for ideas on how to survive. They announced they'd made the tough call to temporarily close this week as well. Jan. 11 was their last day open for the time being.
"It was a very tough decision for us to close temporarily. We are a family run business and members of our immediate family are part of the high-risk group. We didn’t want to put them, or any of our other staff at risk. That, combined with the low sales of takeout it just didn’t make sense for us to keep going," a spokesperson told blogTO.
"Unfortunately the takeout only model just doesn't work as well for pubs as it does for other types of cuisines. We have some amazing regulars who tried their best to support us, and for that we are so grateful. We are looking forward to thanking them properly once we re-open."
Like Noble, all their hopes are pinned on being able to reopen at the end of the current lockdown, though they can't be "sure when that day will be."
"I'm hoping by the end of this 28 day lockdown numbers will have gone down and people will be able to go out more. What we need is the number of vaccines to go up and the number of cases to go down. Once we feel things are more under control we will open our doors again."
The Skyline, a diner, has pivoted throughout the pandemic with a CafeTO patio and to-go cocktails, but will now be closing until next month, and the reasoning is simple for them.
"With Toronto numbers so high we want to keep safety and health as the top priority for our staff," co-owner and operator Maggie Ruhl told blogTO.
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