Restaurant making changes on Thanksgiving; general manager expects business to be down

RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT) - Max’s on Broad in the City of Richmond is open this year, but they say this year they’re offering takeout on top of a dining-in option, usually, they’re just open for diners.

“We have a limited menu consist here by the turkey and ham with pre-assigned sides, and then an option of one of three desserts,” said General Manager Anthony Boniskie.

The restaurant is usually bustling on Thanksgiving, but not this year; they’re expecting business to be down to as low as a quarter from a year ago. With social distancing a concern, the restaurant is having to space out tables.

“Usually for Thanksgiving, we bring in a bunch of extra tables. We just try to get as many people in here as we possibly can, and usually, we do between 800 and 1,000 covers for Thanksgiving. But this year it’s significantly less; we’re doing about 200 this year,” said Boniskie.

The restaurant is drumming up some more business by offering takeout to customers.

“We don’t usually do to-go orders for Thanksgiving just because it’s the busiest day of the year for us, it’s just hard to accommodate all those people wanting to do take out and still maintaining the quality that we expect to put forward,” he said.

The restaurant stopped taking takeout orders on Tuesday; they’re providing food for about 70 customers.

The restaurant is also having to adhere to the governor’s order that prohibits alcohol to be served after 10 p.m.

“We’re usually not getting a lot of business after 9 o’clock anyway, so we had to shrink our hours. We’re usually open from 10 to 10, this year we’re open from 11 to 9,” he said.

Due to the pandemic, the restaurant says they’ve had to cut back hours, as well as cut back on their staff.

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