photo by: Lauren Fox

Kate Gonzalez, co-owner of Global Cafe, has not opened her restaurant back up yet despite being allowed to.

When Kate Gonzalez, co-owner of Global Cafe, opens her restaurant back up, she’ll have to space out tables, pay additional staff members and hope that people will come. She’s not quite sure an increase in customers will come to pass.

“We are suffering financially but also I don’t feel like opening the doors to the public is the solution for that,” Gonzalez said.

Global Cafe, 820 Massachusetts, is one of numerous Lawrence restaurants that have not re-opened for dine-in services, despite being allowed to do so on May 18 per the orders of the local health department. The Journal-World spoke to four restaurant owners about their decision not to open back up.

Gonzalez has not yet opened for dine-in services because she said she wanted to take her time figuring out how to reopen in a safe way. She worries about the responsibility of opening her doors to customers.

“It’s like an added level of stress — the sanitizing and cleaning that needs to happen,” she said.

Yet despite these concerns, Gonzalez said at this point, she has to at least try reopening. The restaurant won’t survive off its curbside orders alone, so she plans to reopen for dine-in service on June 11.

For Raquel McLean, owner of El Matador Cafe, 446 Locust St., the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic was added onto the stress of transferring ownership of the restaurant from her deceased father into her own name. The restaurant has now been in McLean’s family for three generations.

The process of obtaining a restaurant license in her name was one of the reasons McLean has been slow to reopen for dine-in services, she said, but she is also concerned about the health and safety of her customers and employees.

When McLean began doing curbside service, she only did it every other Saturday. She wanted to make sure there were days between when she would go to Kansas City to get her food and when she would serve that food to customers, so that if she felt sick, she could avoid infecting others.

Like Gonzalez, McLean also plans to reopen on June 11. She doesn’t think it’s any safer now, but “financially, I have to,” she said. Hours will be shorter, likely 5 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. from Tuesday through Saturday.

Meg Heriford, of Ladybird Diner, 721 Massachusetts, hasn’t reopened her restaurant for dine-in service because she is continuing to offer free lunches to community members in need, a service she has done since the start of the pandemic. Heriford said it would be too difficult to do dine-in services at the same time, and that she will continue serving free lunches through this month and possibly into July.

“I still feel like I’m feeding people and connecting with people, just in a different way than before,” she said.

Brad Shanks, of Taco Zone, 13 E. Eighth St., said he hasn’t opened back up because he didn’t want to make a “knee-jerk decision” and “change our business to fit this pandemic.” The most important thing to him is the health and safety of his customers and staff. When his employees come back to work, Shanks wants them to be excited.

Taco Zone is a small space, only 900 square feet, Shanks said. To practice social distancing, Shanks said he would only be able to seat a couple of people.

Though Shanks did not give a specific date on which he plans to reopen for dine-in service, he is excited to start a program called the “Taco Zone Party Pack” on June 23. It will be “everything you need to turn your home into a taco zone,” Shanks said, and will be delivered to doorsteps in Lawrence.

“It’s not that we don’t want to open eventually and try out a socially distant restaurant,” Shanks said. He just wants to see if they can get through the next few months doing curbside and taco packs.

“We just wanted to take this real slow,” Shanks said. “We got one shot to really reopen.”