ORLANDO, Fla. –Thousands of service and hospitality industry workers in Central Florida have been furloughed or laid off because of shutdowns related to COVID-19.
- Customer leaves big tip to help I-Drive restaurant
- Rodizio Grill had to furlough almost 100 employees
- Many restaurants have had to shift to takeout only due to coronavirus
Rodizio Grill General Manager Takeo Yamashita knows this better than anyone else, his company has furloughed almost a hundred employees who worked at the International Drive restaurant.
Dining rooms across the state have been shut down because of COVID-19 concerns.
Rodizio Grill on I-Drive opened less than two months before the Gov. DeSantis gave the order to do take-out only.
“February 1 was the first day of business so, and everything started happening after that,” Yamashita said.
He says employees have been telling him about their struggles after getting furloughed.
"Some of the employees have families, some have little kids. Even people are saying like 'well how am I going to survive this next couple weeks, I haven’t got a paycheck,' I don’t know, it’s heartbreaking,” Yamashita said.
But some good Samaritan customers dining nearby noticed the empty restaurant last week.
“So it just happened to be one of the last nights you’re able to go out which was March 19th. We were the only customers there, and they had had to unfortunately send home all of their wait staff. So we wrote them a large tip,” John said.
John wanted us to only use part of his name so he and his family could remain anonymous.
That tip he mentioned was a $400 tip on top of their bill.
The family also gave them a check for $200 to also help the furloughed staff. John and his family gave $600 in all to the hourly staff of the restaurant.
“We asked it be given to those who are waiters and waitresses, those in the service industry,” John said.
Split up amongst all the hourly employees no one will get that much. But right now, anything helps."Of course money is going to help, but the whole kindness it represents is much more,” Yamashita said.
“We said we need to do something, we need to be part of the solution,” John said.