<p>Joey Thurman:<br />My belly is full of pork chop. Thank you so much, quite delicious. Now, Amy, tell me about the storyline here of Stolp. You guys were open and then you had to shut down and now you're reopening.<br /><br />Amy Morton:<br />Yay. We finally are. I'm glad you liked your pork chop, by the way.<br /><br />Joey Thurman:<br />Amazing, yes.<br /><br />Amy Morton:<br />Thanks. So we were open for three weeks and a minute.<br /><br />Joey Thurman:<br />Yeah.<br /><br />Amy Morton:<br />And we've been closed for almost 20 months<br /><br />Joey Thurman:<br />And this was obviously, the elephant in the room, right, COVID, right? So you had all this preparation to open up this beautiful space and then you're pretty much forced to shut down.<br /><br />Amy Morton:<br />We actually closed down before the mandate. So much of what we do is linked with the Paramount Theater that's next door and it was coming, they closed, and we knew it was the right thing to do. And, of course, when we started shutting down, nobody knew how long it would be. We thought it would be a couple weeks. And it was a really tough decision, staying closed that long. I think the community was disappointed and I really stand behind the decision. It was hard, but I know we did the right thing. My other places we opened and we closed and it was incredibly expensive. Then we had this little thing called the next wave come up. So we're here to stay.<br /><br />Joey Thurman:<br />Yeah, and when people are coming in, do you get any pushback from people coming in about checking vaccination status or wearing a mask, taking it off, putting it on? What's the feeling that you're getting?<br /><br />Amy Morton:<br />We have had some backlash on Facebook And I've actually found it quite an interesting repartee to partake in because I 100% stand on what we're doing. Though we take every precaution and make every effort we can to let the guests know. It's on our website. It's every single guest we call to confirm, we let them know. It's on our front door. We're actually just putting up new signs right now. We have had an unbelievably positive, positive experience in making this decision. The vast number of people just say thank you.<br /><br />Joey Thurman:<br />That's nice. And what makes you most nervous about reopening?<br /><br />Amy Morton:<br />The thing that would make me the most nervous is if everything shut down again, particularly theaters for one, which is right next to us, but also because theaters were not given the relief, the arts were not given the relief that restaurants were, though I believe we're beyond that now. I think that it's not a matter of if we get COVID, it's when. I am vaccinated and boosted. I'm honestly one of the few people I know that hasn't had it and I've been working the entire time, though I take great precaution. It's a matter of learning to live with it and we have a new norm and I'm grateful for the guidelines being relaxed when we feel that it's safe now. And I'm worried that people are going to take a long time to come back to work. But I know they will eventually.</p>