Several states have eased lockdown restrictions, including Texas, Georgia, and Oklahoma. Now, businesses are deciding whether to reopen, and, if so, reorganize in order to keep staff and customers safe.
Laura Rea Dickey, CEO of family-owned Dickey's Barbecue Pit, told Cheddar on Monday that the chain's restaurants are slowly reopening their dining rooms to customers and have taken steps to implement social distancing rules in seating arrangements.
"Our dining rooms, we are reconfiguring them. The tables are set, but we're pulling away those excess chairs, making sure seating is six feet apart. When you come into a restaurant you'll see hand sanitizer by the door, you'll see the pit crew in face masks and gloves, and then you'll see everything set up to just help that social distancing," Dickey said.
While customers who arrive together will be able to sit together, there will not be large communal tables like they had before.
During the first few days of the lockdown, the barbecue chain saw dining room traffic drop to less than 9 percent according to the CEO. But, because of their digital services, it was able to recover some of the lost revenue.
"Our sales, thankfully, because we had a very strong online ordering, very strong delivery, very strong curbside, and we've always been caterers -- barbecue lends itself to that -- that we were set up," she said. "It certainly took us six weeks to replace dining room traffic to digital traffic, one to one, but we hit that on Thursday."
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
