Burlington Reporter

Local restaurants are attempting to stay positive and in business despite being hit hard by the fallout of the coronavirus. 

According to Times-News, Alamance County eateries are spreading cheer while hoping to stay in business. Quinn Ray’s Elon restaurant delivered 70 tacos to employees of Alamance Regional Medical Center. At the same time, Sal Caiffa, the owner of Ciao Pizza, has been backed in major ways by local neighborhoods, as Burlington’s The Village Grill served as a spot for a makeshift dinner date that was spotted by assistant manager Taylor Payne. She saw a couple parked out at the restaurant and have a date inside of their car. 

Payne told Times-News, “It looked like they put the seats down and just kind of sat back there and ate together. We’ve had some other ones do that, too, but for some reason they just made me smile. It was cute.” 

National food chain Domino’s Pizza is taking steps to make a difference to keep the community going, according to the Times-News. It has rolled out its hopes to open up 10,000 positions to keep up with heightened delivery. Still, other companies are struggling not to lay off workers. Ray Payne is the managing partner for The Root and Tangent in Elon, while Caiffa Payne oversees Ciao Pizza in Mebane, which Caiffa said has suffered a 40% decline in its revenue.

Ray told Times-News, “It’s been all kinds of unknowns, and we’re still in the unknown. This situation we’re in is very fluid and things are changing every day. We had to take our whole business model and plan, and become basically a new business with takeout only. It’s everything you’ve built, seeing it go away. And the biggest questions with all this going down are, ‘How long can we bleed cash? Do we even have cash to bleed?’”