How about a little jail time to go with those eggs?
Or maybe top it off with a $500,000 fine?
This was the ultimatum Minden 50’s Diner owner Jason Lake faced when he opened the doors to his restaurant in the heart of cottage country Friday — the first Ontario restaurant to do so during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.
Needless to say this restaurant owner has some jam.
“The OPP showed up,” the entrepreneur and former TV host said. “I was pretty anxious.”
The cops were not there to order breakfast.
“They told me if I didn’t close I would be charged under the emergency act,” Lake, 45, said.
He said the two “very nice” health inspectors who he usually deals with “and likes very much” had two more inspectors with them from Toronto.
There was a lot of law enforcement up in this little country diner loved by cottagers, campers, canoeists and locals alike.
“The OPP said the health department could charge me and the health department said the OPP could charge me.”
Maybe even both! There was no way to butter them up.
Lake understands COVID-19 is a deadly disease and needs to be taken seriously, but it just bugs him that he and his fellow restaurateurs are the only ones not being allowed to find a way to open.
He feels he made his point.
“I don’t want to go to jail,” he said with a chuckle. “I just want to stay in business and serve my customers again.”
For the first time in almost three months he was able to do just that — at least for a few hours.
“It was a little different,” Lake said. “I basically cut the 68 seat restaurant in half.”
His laid off staff came out to help and they all did their best to social distance. And the most popular order was Eggs Benedict.
“We put the orders on a table and had people from their table to pick them up,” he said. “Everybody was happy.”
Well, not everybody.
“Since I put on social media a week ago I was going to do this, even though I have a majority of support, some called the police on us,” Lake said.
Rather than ending up in handcuffs, they decided to close the doors again in the afternoon and just offered takeout the rest of the day.
He thought about trying to open again Saturday but decided he didn’t want to jump from the fryer into the frying pan.
“I am 100% a Doug (Ford) guy,” Lake explained. “But this has not been fair to restaurants in certain regions. We don’t have any COVID-19 here and every other business here is back open. The problem is in cottage country we really only have four months to make enough money for the whole year.”
With that in mind, he has set a deadline of June 15 before trying again because if he’s not able to open in some capacity by then, “there will be no more restaurant.”
You can’t pay staff, bills, rent, equipment leases and food contracts if you don’t have any customers. So the bottom line is if this guy is not allowed to sell his burgers, fish and chips, and famous bacon and eggs, his business is going to be toast.
And may himself end up dining on bread and water.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2020
