"I wanted to share with them what we're doing and what we've actually done to make our restaurants as safe as possible for our guests and out associates," Ehmer said. "Ialso wanted to give them a little feedback on how things are going after the first few days."
Ehmer said he was impressed with how receptive the White House was to hearing from businesses and having them share their successes.
Ehmer said he also expressed his appreciation for the frontline workers and talked about the significant plight of the restaurant industry in the U.S.
Ehmer said that the company is putting social distancing protocols in place inside restaurants and following guidelines.
“What we’ve seen is we went from having empty restaurants to having mostly empty restaurants,” Ehmer said. “So we have some people who are coming to sit down and eat with us and the ones that are are extremely grateful to have the opportunity to have a small taste of normalcy.”
Estevez asked Ehmer how long the company could keep up with paying employees with so few customers.
“We’re trying to keep jobs for everybody,” Ehmer said. “We’re trying to create jobs for the restaurants that have closed. We’re optimistic that just a small little step forward is going to help us achieve that goal.”
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