SYDNEY — Loaves and Fishes and the Glace Bay Food Bank aren’t reopening their dining rooms on Friday when Nova Scotia’s economy starts reopening.
Although they can if they follow the same provincial public health guidelines restaurants have to, spokespeople for both organizations say they can’t operate effectively under them.
“In a restaurant, it’s different. You can come in with your family bubble and sit together to eat. Most of our people, they can’t do that,” said Loaves and Fishes general manager Marco Amati.
“I don’t want to open up the dining room and only have 10 people in it, while there’s a lineup of people waiting for their takeout meals asking, 'why do they get to eat in and not us,'” said Glace Bay Food Bank co-ordinator Michelle Kalhbenn. “Takeout meals are working for us. People are used to them so we’re going to stick with this for now.”
Since Nova Scotia declared a state of emergency on March 22 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the meal halls (commonly called soup kitchens) have been serving only takeout meals to their clients.
While it’s not ideal, Amati said it’s allowed them to continue serving as many as 200 people in three hours, seven days a week.
“Right now, we’re still feeding them,” he said. “That’s what's important.”
If Loaves and Fishes were to reopen their dining room, guidelines in place to stop the spread of COVID-19 after businesses start reopening on Friday would mean only 16 people could eat in at a time. Usually, their seating capacity is 48.
However, this isn’t the only challenge the meal hall is facing as reopening is on the horizon. Amati said they also don’t have enough volunteers.
“We have three or four dedicated volunteers who are here daily,” he explained. “A lot of my other regulars, they’ve said they don’t want to come back until there is a vaccine… (To serve meals in the dining room) we need about 10 volunteers working.”
There are other details the soup kitchens would need to work out before reopening, like how long a person can eat inside the dining room and how to efficiently sanitize the table and chair after they leave.
“The board is meeting to start discussing these things and figuring out how we will operate now… June 5 is just too soon for us,” Amati said.
“I don’t want to open with a blind eye and have to close again.”
