Guest Commentary

By Stephanie Rogol

Executive Summary:

Stephanie Rogol operates several eateries in Botetourt County and the New River Valley, including Tizzone, the Town Center Tap House and Sharkey’s. She first wrote about the pandemic’s impact for us last June.

Stephanie Rogol grew up in New York, has lived in VA since 1990, went to graduate school at Virginia Tech for Philosophy and then became a restaurateur.

Lessons learned from a restaurateur

It has been a little over a year since the pandemic began and what a year it has been. Owning restaurants has given me a bird’s eye view of some of the challenges we all have faced. From the start, the greatest concern has been for the well being of our staff, our guests, and our communities. It wasn’t just their physical well being and all the challenges associated with making sure everyone’s health wasn’t jeopardized, but there was the emotional well being and financial well being that needed to always be considered. It was challenging - but in many ways it brought us all closer together.

From the business perspective as challenging as it has been, it also gave us the time to focus on making things better. We used the downtime to upgrade our kitchen hood systems, make the repairs that were needed and hard to do when you are open all the time. We upgraded our POS systems, added online ordering and introduced delivery at a few of our restaurants. With a smaller staff we also needed to become more efficient, and everyone worked together to make that happen. Sometimes you need a little disruption to make changes you otherwise probably would not have made. One of our staff members commented recently to me that Covid has been “a blessing” in that it gave us challenges we otherwise would never have had - and we learn from our challenges. She is a very wise woman.

One thing I have come to realize so deeply is that human beings need to interact with others. They need to be able to go to a safe place to make friends, talk to people, socialize with others. We’ve tried to accomplish it as best we can while maintaining social distancing and everyone wearing masks. It's challenging to do that … facial expressions add a lot to an interaction, but it will all be over soon, and my hope is that the appreciation of others, and the caring of each other will always continue. I deeply appreciate our staff, our guests and our communities for coming together and working together to get through this challenge together. I am so glad to live in Southwest Virginia.

Sometimes you need a little disruption to make changes ”“ you otherwise probably would not have made.