ROTHENBURGER – When eateries get shut down, Kamloops steps up and takes out

When somebody posted a question asking if anyone knew of a restaurant that’s putting together take-away Easter dinners, 19 replies came back: Scott’s, Moxies, White Spot, Masons and so on. Kamloops knows its take-out food.

The North Shore BIA even launched a little contest — post a photo of yourself enjoying some North Shore takeout and you could win a restaurant GC.

Some people, of course, are cooking their own Easter dinners — one guy, apparently new to the cooking thing, wondered where he could buy frozen hamburger patties. Maybe he should consider having that burger delivered to his front door.

Mitchie’s, the local meal delivery outfit, had to suspend business for a while on Thursday after it got swamped with orders. That’s a good kind of problem to have when you’re in business, especially during COVID.

Goodness knows, staying afloat is a challenge for a lot of restaurants right now. After stocking up with thousands of dollars of food for the Easter weekend and beyond, restauranteurs now face the challenge of finding creative ways to get it to customers or throwing it all out.

Since only indoor dining is totally banned, patios once again serve as a desperate option for restaurants and people for whom eating out is a way of life. Patio extensions can’t be installed fast enough.

This isn’t the first time Dr. Henry has dropped a last-minute closure bomb and it undoubtedly won’t be the last. Why it took so long to figure out that the third wave was arriving just in time for Easter is anyone’s guess, but we can’t argue with the necessity of this three-week shutdown.

That doesn’t do the food industry any good, though. Takeout and delivery, patios and such barely pay the bills, if that.

And the deprivation felt by those who have nowhere to go to eat has a serious side. Though we can smile at those social media photos of garlic bread and favourite recipes, the amusement soon wears off.

Since humans first rubbed two sticks together to start a fire so they could roast up a mastodon haunch, breaking bread with friends, family and business associates has been an essential part of life. The social interaction of sitting down at the dinner table with others is necessary to our mental health.

(When we eat together, we eat healthier, too. We take in more veggies and less junk food. It’s true.)

We eat not just for sustenance, but because it makes us happy. When we eat with someone else, it makes us feel even better. We want to share our joyful feelings. We talk, we laugh, we trash the Canucks and the government, we remember old times and we feel at peace.

We can do that as we cook in the kitchen, of course, but there’s something special about sitting in a busy public place and having someone else prepare your food.

In fact, there’s a stigma against eating alone. Have you ever been on a business trip and gone down to the hotel dinning room for dinner, and felt just a little embarrassed at being by yourself? What if all those other people in the room think nobody likes you?

Eating in groups is one of the best ways to get things done. The business lunch and after-work happy hour are essential to the decision-making that makes our economy, and all our society, tick.

When we share a meal with someone we’ve never met, we get to know them quickly. Over appetizers and the special of the day, we find out whether they’re egotistical, shy, self-centred or generous. Kids, grand kids? Favourite author, best movie? Compromise suddenly becomes possible; deals can be made.

As Sunday dinner with the whole family becomes a thing of the past, and we eat more and more fast food in our cars to save some precious time, the restaurant outing and a few special at-home occasions a year — birthdays, Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving — have become increasingly important to our well-being.

All those Facebook posts with pictures of what we’re ordering in for dinner are a desperate proclamation that we’re still here, and that we miss each other.

Please, Dr. Henry, as much as we enjoy our takeout, don’t wait too long to get us back into the restaurants.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.

by Mel Rothenburger

ROTHENBURGER – When eateries get shut down, Kamloops steps up and takes out

Our Community