A Florida restaurant owner is hoping to track down a generous customer who offered up $10,000 in cash as a tip to employees.
Businesses have been struggling ever since Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered restaurant dining rooms to close across the state on March 20 as a means of stopping the spread of the coronavirus outbreak.
The move has forced Ross Edlund, who owns the Skillets restaurant chain in Naples, to lay off about 90 percent of his 200 employees across his nine restaurants, according to the Naples Daily News.
So the anonymous customer’s hefty tip — which came one day before the governor’s order — was much appreciated for the 20 employees at that Skillets location in Naples, as they each took home $500.
“We don’t know who he was yet. I’m trying to figure it out,” Edlund told the Daily News, adding that he thinks it may be a regular named either Bill or Bob. “It’s funny because we have regulars who have been coming in forever, and they’re our friends but we don’t always know their names. We know their faces, their orders, their favorite tables, but we don’t know exactly who they are.”
Edlund told the newspaper that he had to close the Skillets restaurant in Venice due to a lack of business, though the other eight locations remain open with just two or three employees at each.
“To-go was only about 5 percent of our sales before all this. I look at the McDonald’s next door and cars are lined up around the block, because that’s what they do. That’s what they’re built for,” he said. “Breakfast here is an experience. It’s about getting out of the house and letting someone else take care of you. We can’t offer that now, but we’re trying to do the best we can.”
He added that other customers have also been making kind gestures amid the outbreak, like a regular who gave Edlund an envelope filled with $150 in cash.
There have been 2,477 cases of coronavirus in Florida as of Friday afternoon, and 28 deaths, according to The New York Times.
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