“It came at the perfect time because that was right when we shut down again and right as we were having to lay people off, said Mike Ransom, chef-owner of three Ima noodle restaurants in Detroit and Madison Heights. It allowed us to keep on twice as many hourly staff as we’d otherwise been able to, knowing that we had a little extra help to buffer our payroll for two or three periods.
Meals were delivered in the days between Christmas and New Year s, normally one of the busiest weeks of the year for the hospitality industry but not so in 2020 as dining rooms remained shuttered amid the protracted COVID-19 pandemic.