ORANGE PARK – With dining rooms closed and eat-in service suspended indefinitely, the restaurant industry is taking a hit and workers in that sector are feeling the pinch. Daniel DeLeon, president of CEO of Grumpy’s on Kingsley Ave. in Orange Park, is making his own sacrifice to support his employees. DeLeon decided to give up his next two months' salary to keep his 34 employees paid.

Gov. Ron DeSantis issued the order as another precautionary measure in attempts to stop the spread of the virus.

Grumpy’s, a restaurant serving breakfast and lunch daily, has been open for over 20 years. DeLeon, however, took ownership about two and-a-half years ago. He took over, made renovations and concentrated on building the brand.

“The community wanted it to be great,” said DeLeon.

With the orders from the Governor, first to go to 50% occupancy, then to closing his dining room, DeLeon says that Grumpy’s is down about 80% in sales.

“The sector that we’re in, breakfast, lunch and brunch is not a large takeout sector,” DeLeon said. “If people are out of work, typically, people aren't going out to pick up lunch. So, for us, takeout is not a huge percent of our business. We’re a sitdown full-service restaurant, so anytime you close the dining aspect of it, we’re losing the majority of our business and we’re not going to be able to pick that up in takeout. There’s no substitute for people that are coming and dining in.”

With the huge drop off in sales, Grumpy’s like many other establishments, has had to cut hours and work with almost a skeleton crew.

“Everyone’s hours have been cut,” said Courtney Smith, general manager of Grumpy’s. “Knowing the restaurant's struggling, everyone’s worrying about, if no money’s coming in, then how’s money going to be going out? We know Daniel [DeLeon] is giving up his salary, so that’s kind of a relief somewhat for everybody.”

Many restaurants have delivery or have third-party delivery services such as GrubHub and Doordash.

“We do not do third-party delivery at this time,” DeLeon said. “For us, we weren’t in love with the ability to streamline the process and have the quality control that we’d like. We feel like people come to Grumpy’s for that guest experience and that interaction. The third-party delivery is great in very big metropolitan areas, but for us, it takes too long to really love the product. If the demand’s there, we’ll look into it.”

DeLeon also says that it's costly, with a high commission paid to the delivery companies and those costs, then get passed to the customer. Grumpy’s believes in providing quality food at a quality price. Raising prices to accommodate delivery app availability isn’t something he is willing to do.

All of these factors – being a breakfast, brunch and lunch provider, and also lacking delivery service to help augment some of the income – has led to a significant drop off in revenue.

With all of this going on, DeLeon decided to make the personal sacrifice to forgo his salary for two months to help his employees get paid.

“We got the news that we’re decreasing seating and then, shortly thereafter, close the dining rooms, effective immediately. We’re essentially running as a ghost kitchen,” said DeLeon.

“Everyone’s looking at me for answers. What are we gonna to make sure we can sustain this? We looked at our cash flow analysis to see what we have; where can we help? I said, well, I can forfeit my salary for the next two months and put those funds back into the pool. So we looked at it like an employee emergency relief fund. So I’m prepared to do this to give my staff a sense of normalcy. We’re a big family here.”

DeLeon takes pride in his diverse workforce and the close-knit nature of his staff. He understands that this is a “day-by-day and fluid situation.”

“I think there’s a lot of optimism here,” said Smith. “We know that we can have each other’s backs to lean on when we need it. We know we’ve got a great thing going and it won’t be too long before we’re back on a regular track.”