Rashonda Taylor
Staff Writer
Restaurants on D Street in downtown La Verne have had to adapt to the current shelter in place orders, by offering take-out and delivery only options, some partnering with delivery franchises to keep their businesses running as they wait for the OK to open their doors once again.
These restaurants – including Roberta’s Village Inn, Warehouse Pizza, House of Wings Sports Bar and Spooner’s – are also taking extra precautions to ensure the food is safe, first off by limiting employee-customer contact.
Leah Skinner, executive director of the La Verne Chamber of Commerce, said that the Chamber’s website lists all the restaurants in town offering takeout.
Roberta’s Village Inn, a diner on D street, has a large clientele of senior citizens.
“Our food is comfort food to the senior customers that we usually get throughout the week,” said manager Francisco Ramirez. “So we are offering free local delivery to our customers, especially to some of regular senior customers.”
Ramirez said that they had already used DoorDash and UberEats, and the restaurant is not suffering too much of a dip in business so far. Ramirez said the staff is learning to adapt by doing more activities online and sending emails to the community to update them on what they as a business are doing and how they are still operating.
The restaurant has prepped meals for dinner and lunch menus for delivery serving to accommodate regulars.
“We have all of the contacts of our regular customers, so that we can meal prep for them and deliver to the ones who are in need,” Ramirez said.
Kenny Schonfeld, owner of Warehouse Pizza for over 30 years, said D Street’s traffic “is almost nonexistent.
“People are able to park on the street and in front of the other restaurants,” Schonfeld said.
Warehouse Pizza is offering takeout only, not delivery, Schonfeld said, adding this is to protect his staff. Hours have also been shortened for the time being. More information can be found on the Warehouse Pizza website.
“The biggest impact on our business was that we had to take the dine in option out because of safety reasons,” said Hayley Kurisu, manager and bartender at the House of Wings.
“Our sales did not drop drastically since we still have delivery through GrubHub as an option, but since most of our customers (would) come in and stay to watch sports.”
Kurisu said House of Wings has cut hours as well as the number of employees. It’s currently open for takeout from noon to 8 p.m., Monday through Saturday.
“Usually we had five to six workers on a typical day, but now it is only two a day,” Hailey said.
Spooner’s Korean restaurant is also offering takeout and delivery.
“We used to interact with our customers a lot more, but once the virus was getting more dangerous, we decided to lessen our interactions between the customers and ourselves,”said Spooner’s manager Judy Lim.
The La Verne Chamber of Commerce is keeping the community updated on restaurant hours and offerings via its Facebook page.
Rashonda Taylor can be reached at rashonda.taylor@laverne.edu.
