Restaurants are having to get creative as they reopen amid physical distancing rules, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. At their Tuesday night reopening, South Carolina restaurant Open Hearth sat their live customers next to fancy dressed blow-up dolls. “The G-rated kind,” owner Paula Starr Melehes clarified to Fox19, purchased from Amazon for around $140.
The purpose of the dolls was to make their restaurant feel a little more full, given they aren’t able to seat the same amount of people as they would’ve pre-pandemic, Melehes said. “Instead of using scary, yellow tape or roping off the empty tables, I thought, ‘We’re going to make this restaurant look full,'” she said. “They are very humorous, and they have nice faces.