Local restaurants are doing everything they can to stay open as long as possible.

Rebecca Lalui, owner of The Friendly Society in Elora, said she’s of course apprehensive about what’s going to happen next.

“All along changes keep coming kind of every few weeks or so, there’s new guidelines to follow and you don’t know whether or not you’re going to be shut down soon or not,” Lalui said.

Lalui said the government could close inside of restaurants again, so it’s hard to know whether to invest money in making outside warm for guests.

She added that they have got heaters and blankets, but you never know what’s going to happen.

Rebecca O’Brien, owner of The Goofie Newfie in Fergus, said contact tracing has been a real struggle.

“People just have a real issue providing, even though it’s for their safety and for their knowledge, they have a real struggle wanting to provide their name and phone number, I wasn’t expecting the hesitancy to provide that information coming into a restaurant,” O’Brien said.

O’Brien says that their food service has also been hindered due to the extreme level of constant sanitization in the kitchen.

O’Brien said that the level of service is different than pre-COVID-19.

“We take photos of people on our patio thousands of time of day on their phone, this year we had to say we couldn’t,” O’Brien said.

O’Brien said some of their customers love to chat with their servers, but now they can’t hang around and chat for 20 minutes because of the safety precautions put in place.

She added that they are pivoting and doing everything they can to keep their doors open and to ensure safety for all.

Rebecca Lalui, owner of The Friendly Society: