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It’s been just over a year since COVID-19 was called a pandemic and shuttered business across America.

Locally, restaurants, bars and stores began the virus-plagued year experiencing extreme losses, but have since started to come back.

“It’s been up and down for us,” said John Dubea, one of the owners of Clear River Ice Cream, Bakery & Deli. “At first, we were only open four hours a day in April and our sales were down 90%. But we gradually picked back up as the year went on.”

Other businesses fared a bit better, such as Burger Burger.

“It hasn’t been that bad for us,” said Tamara Day, manager at the restaurant on Main Street.

Day said they implemented several safety protocols at the beginning of COVID-19 and stuck with them through the year.

“We did the masks and we scaled back our capacity to 50%,” she said. “We also did more sanitizing and social distancing.”

Dubea at Clear River also implemented restrictions, including scaling back capacity and requiring masks.

“Our store still looks a little different,” he said. “We still don’t have some tables in place and our retro booth from the middle is still out.”

Pioneer Bar and other establishments that only sold alcohol before the pandemic expanded its menu in order to stay open for periods of time last year.

                “We were able to open back up as a restaurant,” Judge Edwards, one of the owners of the bar, said. “We added some food items that helped a lot.”

Other businesses on Main Street such as the Pontotoc Vineyard Weingarten adapted to social distancing guidelines by offering delivery to their customers.

“For more than the last year, I’ve been driving around the state delivering wine to customers and we call it ‘front porch delivery,’” Carl Money, one of the owners of the family-run winery, said.

Money said even as a child, he wanted to be a part of front porch delivery for his grandfather’s dairy farm. “This fulfilled a childhood ambition of mine,” Money said.

Money offers free front porch delivery to anyone in the state that orders at least $100 worth of wine. He said they deliver all their products, including sangria and picnic baskets. 

“Once you show up at somebody’s house in the middle of a pandemic …” Money said. “They’re a customer for life.”

Back to normal

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott rescinded the statewide mask order and capacity limits on Wednesday, March 10. The City of Fredericksburg then followed suit.

Several local businesses, however, are still keeping some guidelines.

“We’re still rolling at 75% capacity and we’ve stuck with masks for our employees. We’re allowing customers to use them at their discretion,” Day said.

Clear River is also sticking with some guidelines.

“Employees still have to wear masks, but we’re not requiring customers to wear masks because we’re tired of fighting that battle,” Dubea said. “We’ve been verbally assaulted and we’ve had things thrown at us, so we’re moving away from that.”

He said the store is also operating at around 75% capacity.

Pioneer Bar is no longer requiring masks, but Edwards is keeping some of the furniture out the bar for now.

“We’re doing our best to serve everyone we can, but we do still encourage masks,” he said.

Since the bar opened up in 2019 and was just starting up when the pandemic hit, Edwards said the Pioneer Bar has been busy.

“This is our first spring break,” Edwards said. “Spring break tends to be a very busy time around Fredericksburg, so we’re very excited about that.”

Looking ahead

While things appear to be trending upward, COVID-19 is still considered a pandemic.

Pontotoc will continue serving customers in its large courtyard outside for the time being.

“People feel comfortable having our picnic baskets or our wine outdoors and I think our staff feels comfortable, as well,” Money said.

Dubea said he foresees continuing some guidelines for a few more months until more people get vaccinated.

“I don’t think we’ll have to worry about staying six feet apart from others too much longer,” he said.