Feeling vulnerable: Businesses devise solutions as Vaughan readies for stage 2 reopening

Hello123 co-owner Mark Kupfert feels there's going to be a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic

Yorkregion.com
June 18, 2020
Dina Al-Shibeeb

Businesses such as restaurants and hair salons are coming up with different solutions, including serving fewer customers, as Vaughan moves to stage 2 of reopening June 19 after the COVID-19 shutdown.

Before COVID-19, a vegan restaurant in Vaughan called Hello123 used to serve 60 people at its maximum capacity, but will now be slashed in half, said its co-owner Mark Kupfert.

Kupfert is en route to getting fridges and freezers because he wants his relatively new restaurant -- which opened in September 2019 -- to be partly a “mini health food store” to guarantee his business’s survival.

“We feel like there's still going to be a second wave, and we just realized how vulnerable restaurants are,” he added.

The selection is going to be “very curated” with customers expected to choose from the “best vegan ice cream” or the “best vegan meatballs.”

The idea is also in line with what other restaurants in downtown Toronto are doing to get by, where passersby can buy a sangria or some high-level cheese for example.

Susan Arevalo, owner of Maple Hair Salon, used to serve about 20 clients a day, but that’s expected to go down since she will be having one hairdresser for one client at a time.

Arevalo, who survived the past three months from her pocket and didn’t take help from the government, won’t be greeting her clients with coffee or drinks like the way it used to be done before.

While there is the expected high demand for people wanting to be groomed, with Arevalo not being able to “fit” and schedule everyone for Friday or Saturday, she expects her clients to bring their own masks, and if they come early they can “sit in their own car,” for example.

However, she has hand sanitizers at her hair salon to keep people “safe.”

Stage 2 reopening follows after Vaughan’s decision to reopen access to all public tennis courts, skateparks, the dog park and parking lots at City-operated parks on Friday, June 12. All other park amenities -- including playgrounds, sports fields, outdoor exercise equipment, basketball courts, splash pads and public washrooms -- will remain closed to the public until further notice.

As of June 16, almost 44 per cent of York Region's 2,799 COVID-19 cases are in Vaughan, with close contact being the highest percentage of transmission between people in the City.

When Premier Doug Ford made the announcement about Stage 2 reopening, he described how the chief medical officers of York, Durham and Toronto agree that is a risk the province can take.

“We’re hoping very shortly that we will be able to reopen the other regions. Certain areas were having outbreaks and other areas weren’t,” Ford said. “We just want to make sure that Peel Region and Toronto and Windsor get the numbers lower.”

From his side, Mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua said he wanted to “express” his “gratitude to the citizens of Vaughan for being disciplined, focused and following advice.”

“We've been disciplined in a lot of areas that you probably noticed. We were putting out information every day, and we come up with new ideas every day to get through this,” he added.

“I'm very happy that I remain disciplined and focused throughout this process, because today as we are reopening, and going (into) stage two, this tells me that the strategy we took -- (the strategy) we were focused and disciplined on -- has worked well for the City.”