On Saturday, March 14, before the lockdown began in Oregon, Kurt Huffman took his family out to dinner at the new restaurant he co-owns called Bar King. It had just opened around the corner from another of Huffman's restaurants called Loyal Legion. Both venues were packed.

Normally, a pair of full houses is a welcome sight. But when Huffman saw both restaurants that crowded just as the scope of the coronavirus pandemic was becoming clear, he was disquieted. Huffman began to worry that leaving the restaurants open would put his diners, his staff, and his family in danger. Late that night, he convinced his business partners that it was time to close the doors.

“We felt like we had to serve as an example to show public officials in our tiny way that the industry was in favor of protecting ourselves and the general public,” Huffman says.

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That same weekend, chef Peter Cho of the award-winning Korean restaurant Han Oak grew uneasy when he saw the number of reservations on the books. The restaurant has been a local hot spot for years, and its recent appearance in the Netflix show Ugly Delicious has only raised its profile. Cho was especially eager to enforce social distancing, because he and his wife and business partner, Sun Young Park, live in the same building as their restaurant.

“I was feeling a little unsafe about it," Cho says. "I was ready to close that Friday night. But I put it to a vote, and the staff wanted to work through the rest of that weekend. They were like, 'We have people booked.'”

The following Monday, Oregon governor Kate Brown ordered dining rooms closed statewide. The state government restricted all restaurants from serving food that isn't takeout or delivery and banned all gatherings of more than 25 people. By the end of the next week, 28 states including Oregon had shelter-in-place orders in effect, with nonessential businesses shuttered and residents ordered to stay inside unless absolutely necessary.

New Standards

In the wake of widespread closures, many restaurants have turned to delivery and takeout to keep revenue coming in. Some restaurants are weathering the storm, even as they deal with unforeseen complications.

Chef Aaron Adams runs Farm Spirit and Fermenter in Portland. The former is a chic farm-to-table restaurant, the latter a casual lunch counter. The two are also right next door to each other, 400 feet apart, with a walk-in refrigerator between them.

With three distinct and separate spaces, Adams set up a new workflow for his kitchen and service that allowed individual cooks work totally separated from one another. He posted the prep flowchart to his Instagram page, and it’s been making the rounds on social media.

Adams was inspired by the guidelines that his wife, Jenny, a registered nurse, was following at the hospital where she works. “[We] have one person work in one kitchen and another person working in isolation in another, and then have them deliver at separate times coordinating food into the walk-in cooler,” Adams says. “Then they sanitize their spaces and then they leave. And then another person comes in and sanitizes the space again for redundancy and then they leave. We basically created a system where nobody comes near each other.”