On Tuesday, Marin County will join most of the Bay Area and go into shutdown mode.
Dining spots enjoyed one last night Monday before new restrictions go in effect. Nine exhausting months in, people say they're just hoping to make it through this new shutdown.
“We had to let about half of our staff go so, right now we’re running bare-bones,” said Nathan Lederer.
Lederer is a barista, cook and server at Mario’s Cafe at Union and Columbus. On Sunday, he wasn’t sure he’d even have one job Monday.
“Halfway through my shift, the manager called me and said I could cook,” he said. “And all of a sudden it was just like ‘I can pay rent’ not everyone is that lucky.”
Just across the bay in Sausalito, it was “the last supper” as one diner called it, one last outdoor dinner before everyone in the county goes back to the way it was in the spring: takeout and delivery only.
“We’ve got employees 30, 40, 50 years here. Long term, very loyal and like family. And then laying off these people who’ve been with you for so many years,” said Jeff Scharosch of The Spinnaker Restaurant. “It’s tough, it's tough, it's heartbreaking.”
Restaurants are getting creative. Spinnaker came up with a program called Drive and Dine where people go down and get their food to go, but while they eat, they can check out that million-dollar view of San Francisco.
Hard-core diners are getting creative as well.
Two dined in Contra Costa County on its final night before shutdown and woke up wondering if they were out of dining options.
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“And then we remembered Marin was not shut down,” said Juve Vela of Berkeley. “As soon as we realized that, our faces lit up like Christmas trees! Of course here we are.”
