On Mother’s Day, one of the busiest days of the year for restaurants, pressure from continuously opening and closing is making the owner of the Jacksonville Inn, Jerry Evans, extremely frustrated.
“The government is just making it very difficult to be in business these days,” he said.
Evans has been running the historic inn for the last 45 years. Normally, the Jacksonville Inn hosts 600 different reservations on Mother’s Day.
He says this Mother’s Day has been harder to plan for since he and his staff had to cancel over 300 brunch reservations because Jackson County went into the extreme risk tier.
Many had been made months in advance.
“Then, just a few days before Mother’s Day they say we can open up again, well, at that time you’ve got 300 people wanting to remake reservations and you can’t even talk to people that fast,” said Evans.
He says keeping people employed and hiring new staff is also a large issue, “You advertise for employees and no one shows up.”
He says he’s even had to give food away, so it doesn’t go to waste when shutdowns happen and close indoor dining.
“It’s just like a 3-dimensional puzzle trying to put things back together, trying to schedule staff and supplies to cover the number of guests we’re expecting,” Evans said.
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