ZUMBROTA — While restaurants have faced challenges during the past two years because of COVID-19, one town’s eateries have not just survived but thrived.
That town is Zumbrota.
And while restaurants there have faced the same issues as others — increased supply costs, labor shortages, and fallout over COVID — the city’s restaurants are still there, finding ways to keep the doors open for customers looking for a meal.
“Our hours are different,” said Shari Kothenbeutel, owner and manager of Covered Bridge Family Restaurant, the restaurant that was opened by her parents in 1976. “We’re closed two days a week, Monday and Tuesday, which we never used to do. But now that we’ve started the Monday-Tuesday thing, we like it.”
Kothenbeutel said when the pandemic began, and the first shutdown happened in March 2020, the family restaurant relied on, well, family to keep things going.
