Food & Drink
It’s been an odyssey for Whiskey Joe’s, which opened a day before the lockdown began
The COVID-19 pandemic has been an odyssey fraught with danger and challenges on all sides for businesses, especially for restaurants.
A case in point is Whiskey Joe’s Bar & Grill, a good-time waterfront restaurant at 5313 19th St. E., Ellenton.
When the restaurant opened in March 2020, it was just as the global pandemic was arriving. A day later, Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered a 50% cap on dining room occupancy, spacing tables at least six feet apart and health screenings for workers.
It wasn’t long before DeSantis took the next step and ordered dining rooms and retail stores to close during a lock-down to curb the spread of the disease.
No wonder then that once DeSantis issued instructions in late April 2020 on how dining rooms could begin reopening, Whiskey Joe’s brand manager Marty Duffany was in no hurry to fling the doors back open.
“The profits are not worth the risk,” Duffany said in 2020. “We have to retrain the way that, not only our back of the house, but our front of the house, services a guest. There needs to be social distancing from the table as they’re taking the order. The way we drop off drinks and food is going to change.”
It seemed that the bloom had been taken off the opening of the new restaurant that had been so eagerly anticipated in the community.
So, how did it work out at Whiskey Joe’s in the year and a half since the pandemic arrived?
Surprisingly, very well.
“When we went to reopen, we didn’t know how busy we would be. We were inundated with guests. We couldn’t hire enough staff. Myself and our managers were in the back cooking,” Duffany said.
“Now we are in a really good place in the front of the house and in the back of the house,” he said.
California-based Specialty Restaurant Corporation, addressed the staffing problem many businesses have faced during the pandemic by offering improved salaries and strong benefits packages.
“We are fully staffed up,” Duffany said.
Aside from the new sanitizing regimen to ward off the pandemic, it turns out the way that Whiskey Joe’s is designed helps keep guests and staff safe. The restaurant features garage doors that can be opened wide to bring in fresh air, and has lots of outdoor seating on a deck facing the Manatee River and under an outdoor pavilion.
In fact, the outdoor seating far exceeds indoor seating. There are 110 seats in the restaurant, 168 outside on the deck and 200 on the man-made beach along the river.
Even when the dining room was closed early in the pandemic, it performed well with 10 cooking to-go orders in the kitchen.
Whiskey Joe’s has done so well that it is now seeking approvals to add an event center on its property, a second dock which could accommodate 20 boats, and to extend its riverfront beach.
By 2023, the Specialty Restaurant Corporation expects to add Whiskey Joe’s in Pensacola, Port Charlotte and Jacksonville, bringing the total in Florida to seven. The other Whiskey Joe’s now open are in Miami, Port Richey, and Tampa.
Robert Migliaro, Whiskey Joe’s district manager, said the company is looking to get more involved with community projects.
“The clientele we have are the best. They come from Bradenton, Sarasota, Lakewood Ranch, Riverview, Colony Cove. If we didn’t have the locals, what would we have?” Migliaro said.
Migliaro might have been talking about guests like sisters Jan Chard, Nanette Vuolo and Mary Mangan who arrived early to celebrate Vuolo’s birthday.
“This is a great place,” Vuolo said.
Even though vaccines are now readily available, the company continues its stepped-up sanitation efforts with the realization that the pandemic is still on the prowl.
“We are not doing live music now to encourage social distancing,” Migliaro said.
Whiskey Joe’s is open 11 a.m. - 10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday and 11 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday. For more information, call 941-263-3111 or visit https://www.thewhiskeyjoes.com/.
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