Good morning, troops. It’s Wednesday, April 22.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, Troy Ummel might have found a new product line for his restaurant.

He wasn’t necessarily calculating about it, but it certainly is cold. Frozen, actually.

The COVID-19 scare has transformed Troy Ummel’s Connected, a gourmet restaurant in Central Peoria, into Connected Marketplace.

Instead of serving hot meals for takeout or curbside pickup, like other area restaurants, Ummel is selling a limited selection of frozen dinners he is preparing. Some are from the regular Connected menu, but most aren’t.

Customers can take home the meals from Ummel’s restaurant at 3218 N. Dries Lane and use their ovens to finish cooking. Ummel provides proper containers and instructions.

"A lot of times, people like to go out for dinner for nice food but don’t want to spend an hour and a half, or take a shower and shave," Ummel said.

"Can you imagine being at home in your sweatpants and having a high-end meal? That’s where this is going."

When the stay-at-home order suspended in-person restaurant dining, Ummel and his family were planning to go to Florida, where they have a residence. But after a week in the Peoria area, Ummel decided to change course.

In his restaurant kitchen, Ummel experimented with different dishes to see what might hold up well after freezing. Carryout of his restaurant’s regular fare wasn’t an option.

"Even if you’re McDonald’s, anything fried won’t travel, period," he said. "You’re not getting it at its peak.

"Say it takes 20-25 minutes to prepare. It’s got to be boxed, then it sits for a few minutes, you come and pick it up and it’s 15-20 minutes until it reaches its destination. You just can’t serve food that way."

Each meal’s elements are cooked partially. An assembly-line process brings them together, after which the packages are flash frozen in equipment Ummel acquired for that purpose.

The Connected patio now sports a counter and freezers from which the dinners can be sold.

About five or six main courses are on the frozen-food menu, with about as many side dishes. Main-course prices are in the $13 to $15 range.

Current offerings include rigatoni parmesan and grilled chicken and a wild-mushroom risotto. Selections are based on plenty of trial and error, according to Ummel.

"It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done," he said. "When serving in a restaurant, you’re eating it in a matter of seconds. Now you’re adding in a freezing process and a reheating process, and you have to factor so many things in that you normally don’t.

"If you wanted to do a sea bass or even a ribeye (steak), it’s impossible to duplicate right off the grill."

Connected Marketplace appears to have a market. Ummel said he sold about 800 dinners in the first week and a half. A local grocery outlet has expressed interest.

After more than 30 years in the restaurant business, Ummel appears pleasantly surprised about the most recent turn in his career. When asked if he wants to continue to produce the frozen meals once the stay-at-home order is lifted, he laughed.

"Hell, no. But we probably will," Ummel said. "What are you going to do? You’ve created a monster."

The song not heard on the way to work, generated from a random YouTube search, hearkens to some good times spent in the 1980s at various central Illinois venues. Most of them with low ceilings and sticky floors.