Eat'n Park poised to resume in-person dining June 5

Eat’n Park Hospitality Group officials are excited to make and see more smiles next week as dine-in options resume at most restaurants.

“Many of our guests have been quarantined,” President and CEO Jeff Broadhurst said Friday afternoon. “They’ve been sitting in their house ready to get out. They want to come back to a place that’s safe and comfortable, see faces they know and familiar faces. That’s Eat’n Park. We can’t wait to welcome them back.”

Broadhurst, along with Director of Safety & Security Bill Moore and Chief Marketing Officer Kevin O’Connell, met with members of the media at the Banksville Road location about an hour after Gov. Tom Wolf announced Allegheny and other Western Pennsylvania counties would move to the green phase June 5.

All but three of the 60 Eat’n Parks are expected to be open for dine-in starting at 7 a.m. that day.

Locations not ready for seated customers yet are in Erie County and Center and Chippewa townships in Beaver County. Those areas will remain in the yellow phase.

Guests will see many changes to the dine-in experience at the Place for Smiles. There will be no more waiting in the lobby for seating.

Patrons can come in wearing masks, give their name and vehicle description and head back to their car, Moore said.

Staffers then would come to guests’ cars and let them know when a table is ready. Guests can remove their masks when seated and put them back on when leaving.

Seating will be cut to half-capacity to allow for social distancing. Tables not in use will be marked. Restaurants typically seat between 200 to 240 people, Moore said.

The company revamped its employee training program, and it is using a new disinfectant because of the coronavirus pandemic, he said.

“We’ve always been concerned about safety,” Moore said. “We went back to our training programs to retrain our employees on good personal hygiene, sanitation, sterilization, making sure that they are disinfecting table tops properly.”

Employees also are encouraged to stay home if they are feeling sick.

Staffers will be disinfecting touchpoints such as door handles, restrooms and touchscreens every hour as part of the safety changes.

Soup and salad bars were eliminated to comply with state guidelines.

Other changes include:

• One-way lobby doors for entering and exiting.

• Plexiglas dividers at the checkout counters.

• Paper menus that are thrown away after one use.

• Hand sanitizers in the lobby.

• Social distancing prompts on the floors in all lobbies.

• Restaurant hours are 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. until further notice.

The return of indoor dining means the return of servers and other employees who have been furloughed during the pandemic.

Broadhurst couldn’t narrow down how many staffers were laid off or would be brought back, but he said it could be in the thousands.

Broadhurst and Moore wore red and green smiley face masks, respectively, that were designed by a team from Monroeville. Smiley masks eventually will be available for purchase.

Takeout and curbside pickup will remain available at the locations currently offering those services.

Broadhurst said takeout has more than doubled during the covid-19 pandemic with about 55% of customers ordering from Eat’n Park’s smartphone app.

Before the pandemic, dine-in service made up about 85% of a restaurant’s revenue and takeout the remaining 15%.

The Pittsburgh-based restaurant chain has tried a variety of things to make up for lost revenue, including selling milk, bread and other grocery items. Those products still will be available after indoor dining resumes.

“When you lose 85% of your sales overnight, you’re basically a startup company,” O’Connell said. “You’ve got to build the sales from the ground up just like a startup would, and that’s kind of how we’ve been approaching it.”

More information about how the Hospitality Group is handling the pandemic and return of dine-in services is available at eatnpark.com.