Local businesses look ahead to a slow reopen

There’s nothing like popcorn with movie theater butter, if anybody knows that, it's the Mary Pickford Theater in Cathedral City.

Tonight and tomorrow the theater will be taking orders for curbside pickup from 5 to 7:30 and all the proceeds go to the theater’s staff who hasn’t been able to work. Instead of layoffs, the theater has been coming up with creative ways to keep the staff supported. Like many around the world, local businesses are adapting to the idea of a new normal.

“Normally, this time of year, we have a little skeleton of November, December and October, right now it’s pretty much a full slate,” said Mary Pickford's general manager Ted Hane.

With Governor Newsom releasing a plan for reopening California, movie theaters like Mary Pickford in Cathedral City are adapting to the idea of a new normal, at least at the beginning.

“Even if we did 10 people per show and we have 14 screens, that’s 140 people every two hours. You know, that’s a good day,” Hane said.

When theaters do reopen, Hane believes they’ll be relying heavily on online ticketing.

“I think it’ll basically be reduced seating and automatic reserved seating all the time. So, you will have to really make sure that you get your tickets ahead of time and that you’re able to, depending on how the rules are, sit your group together, even if that means you’re every other seat or something like that,” he said.

This is what Hane pictures being the plan as of now, but he says they’ll adjust accordingly.

“We don’t have a choice, we have to ease back into this at some point,” he said.

The same goes for restaurants, and one local owner expressed his concern.

“If the new regulations that Newsom just put into effect, when we reopen, we’re going to have to remove half of our tables out of the dining room and all the rest of the stuff, so if we go from seating 120, down to 60, it’s going to be tough to pay the rent. Our revenues are going to be cut in half automatically and depending on how long that goes… big problem,” said Ira Mosley, owner of Papa Dan's in Palm Desert.

While the situation is not ideal, Hane says that something is better than nothing. Now as for the curbside snacks, ordering ahead is your best bet. Hane tells me the response has been great so far, and they’re even considering keeping this going every weekend until they can officially open up again.