As New York City restaurants reopened indoor dining rooms at 35 per cent capacity on Friday, the Peter Luger Steak House and Madame Tussauds New York wax museum joined forces to welcome diners back in a fun way and to enforce social distancing guidelines.
Wax figures of Audrey Hepburn, dressed as her character Holly Golightly in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” sitting in front of a Martini, and Jon Hamm as his character Don Draper in “Mad Men” holding an Old Fashioned cocktail, greeted customers while waiters rushed by with plates of sizzling steaks.
The coronavirus pandemic hit New York establishments especially hard, where, the National Restaurant Association says, restaurants accounted for 9 per cent of employment in the state in 2019 and brought in $51.6 billion in sales in 2018.
“It’s been rough,” said Michael Costa, manager at Peter Luger’s Brooklyn steakhouse.
“We’re going to adapt to what’s going on. Right now we’ll take whatever they give us, 25 is good, 35, whatever they want to give us because we’re at the bottom,” Costa said. “But, we’ll survive.”