Still) Navigating COVID-19

Venues, vendors discuss protecting guests from pandemic-related risks

By Meghan Walsh

In the last couple years, it has become critical for b’nai mitzvah venues to ensure that all COVID-19 safety protocols are followed so hosts and guests alike can enjoy themselves and protect their health at the same time.

Whitney Neidus, general manager of The Venue at StoneWater Golf Club in Highland Heights, and Joan Rosenthal, founder and CEO of Marigold Catering in Cleveland, discuss the safety procedures their companies put in place to assure safe experiences are had by all.

“First and foremost, we followed all guidelines in terms of capacity, number of people, space,” Neidus says of the adjustments made during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We followed everything that we had to legally.”

To make guests feel as comfortable as possible, The Venue at StoneWater set up sanitizing stations. All meals were plated, Neidus says, so guests were not touching the same foods and utensils. Each event had assigned seats, the tables having anywhere from four to eight family members together.

“We did everything possible to make people feel comfortable,” she says.

Neidus says her sta communicated these precautions to vendors by sharing their expectations for the evening.

“Everybody that was comfortable being in the situation, everybody was graceful,” she notes. “We didn’t have any issues of people not adapting or following our guidelines and stu like that.”

In the early days of the pandemic amid shutdowns, thanks to the golf club’s restaurant, they were able to keep operating at some level through curbside takeout, she says. Though this did not fully meet their normal operations, it did carry them through the parts of the pandemic in which so many businesses were forced to shut down, either temporarily or permanently.

Things have since returned to looking similar to how they did pre-pandemic, she says.

“We obviously do still have hand sanitizer, things like that, around,” Neidus says. “The cleaning crew obviously still comes in every night, which they always did. I would like to think that it’s back to normal.”

Marigold Catering took many safety precautions to minimize health risks for their guests and workers, Rosenthal says.

“Precautions that we took once we started doing events again was we put up plastic shields around all of our bu ets,” she explains. “We had servers behind the bu ets, it wasn’t self-serve. The guests would go through the bu ets and servers would actually plate the food up for them.”

Sta was required to wear masks and be vaccinated against COVID-19, she says. Guests were not allowed in unless they wore masks and the only times they were allowed to remove them was to eat or drink.

“The whole sta was masked up, everybody wore gloves, the event planners would have the guests put on masks when they came in,” Rosenthal recalls.

Party planners saw to it that these rules were adhered to so they could make sure events went smoothly and health risks were minimized, she says. Communicating these guidelines to workers, guests and vendors was fairly easy because Marigold was operating primarily at its own event space, Tenk West Bank in Cleveland’s West Bank of the Flats.

“Tenk, which is our agship venue, is ours,” she says. “So, we didn’t have to communicate. Everybody just knew the rules and the event planners, they communicated with the vendors.”

Rosenthal says Marigold catered events with Glidden House in Cleveland’s University Circle quite a bit before COVID-19, but it was closed during the height of the pandemic.

The only way Marigold would work with vendors is if they were masked and gloved, she points out.

When Marigold was not able to host events at the beginning of the pandemic, it survived through Paycheck Protection Program loans, Rosenthal recalls.

“We were very fortunate,” she notes. “We got three PPP loans, so that carried us through the time when we were closed, and had we not gotten those PPP loans, we would have been closed. We would not have been able to maintain the business.”

She says in the event something similar to the COVID-19 pandemic were to happen again, the most important suggestion she would have for younger businesses is to adhere and adapt to recommended safety protocols.

“The only advice I could give is that everybody needs to maintain safety measures,” Rosenthal says. BM

Event setup at Tenk West Bank in Cleveland’s West Bank of the Flats. Photo / Marigold Catering

The Venue at StoneWater Golf Club in Highland Heights. Photo / The Venue at StoneWater