Bay View’s Egg & Flour installs personal safety partitions to protect customers from COVID-19 upon reopening
MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- Restaurants quickly had to close after the governor ordered bars and restaurants to close to stop the spread of coronavirus.
One local business in Bay View took a blow, but has hope that the shelter in place order won’t last forever, and it's getting ready for when that day comes.
Egg & Flour in Bay View was only open for six days before they had to shut their doors, but they took advantage of this time to make some upgrades by installing personal safety partitions to keep their customers safe once they open back up.
“We were ready to go, it was our first Monday of being open, all excited, and as soon as that news hit, we closed down,” said Adam Pawlak, Executive Chef and owner of Egg & Flour Pasta Bar.
Their location at Crossroads Collective is only accepting takeout orders, but since Governor Evers' Safer at Home Order, they’ve had to shut down operations at their Bay View location.
“I mean it’s a lot of mixed emotions,” said Pawlak. “You do all this work, you’re essentially rushing to get to the deadline. So essentially we rushed to close.”
But as disappointing as that was, Adam says they’ve kept busy getting ready for the day they can reopen by installing personal safety partitions for customers made of clear PVC and hung from the ceiling.
“Airborne contaminants -- a sneeze, a cough, whatever that may be, is going to be stopped by the safety partition,” says Tony Goff, president of Goff Enterprises and Egg & Flour restaurant partner.
Goff Enterprises usually does industrial space partitioning for the automotive, pharmaceutical, and food processing industries, but Tony says this product is the first of its kind in any restaurant anywhere, and is easy to install and maintain.
“When we heard that people need to remain separate, as in keep 6 ft apart, we thought we could really help with creating the separation without actually having people be physically separated,” said Goff.
Once they’re back in the restaurant, in addition to regular cleaning and sanitizing, customers will not only stand six feet apart due to stickers on the floor, but because of the partitions, they’ll be able to avoid any contact with all other people except for the person who hands them their pasta.
They hope this, in addition to everything they do, helps show their clientele they care and are ready to come back safer and stronger than ever.
“With these partitions they can still enjoy the space, and have fun, and have a night out, and feel like they can relax and enjoy themselves instead of coming in here with a mask, getting it to go, and running out right away,” said Pawlak.
“It’s just important to our company to get everyone back to some semblance of new normal as quickly and as safely as possible,” said Goff. “And that’s what this product is all about.”
Egg & Flour doesn’t yet have a set reopen date, but they say that when they do, they hope the community comes out to support them, knowing they’ll be safe.