When the 102-year-old Wayside Restaurant reopened its doors to diners last month, it earned a rare distinction as one of the few local businesses to survive two global pandemics.
Effie Ballou opened the Wayside as a roadside lunch stand in July 1918. Within weeks, the Spanish flu pandemic was raging.
Historic photos and documents don’t show what happened next, said Brian Zecchinelli, who now runs the Wayside with his wife, Karen. But he suspects it was something like when the coronavirus outbreak set in earlier this year: The building’s doors closed to the public while its owners figured out how to keep feeding the community.
“We took this one seriously,” Zecchinelli said. “I wanted to weather this storm successfully.”
When Gov. Phil Scott ordered bars and restaurants to close for in-person business on March 17, many local businesses quickly pivoted to online ordering and takeout service. But the Zecchinellis took their time getting back into the kitchen.
They used the downtime to prepare the Wayside for a safe reopening, installing touchless door handles and faucets, building partitions between tables, and adding two new exits to reduce crowding at the main door.
“We’re striving to be Vermont’s safest restaurant,” Zecchinelli said.
At lunchtime on a recent Thursday, the space felt familiar: diners of all ages scattered in booths, a cooler full of Moxie soda by the door, Frankie Valli on the sound system.
But the Wayside, which would normally serve up to 1,000 customers a day, is noticeably quieter. Under state guidelines, the restaurant can seat only up to 50% of its capacity, and some tables — marked with orange cones — are too close for social distancing. Stools at the front counter have been replaced with decorative American flags. (“Hey, we’ve got to be a little patriotic here,” Zecchinelli said.)
Those conditions have cut down on the social aspect of the Wayside, Zecchinelli said. “You don’t have that open restaurant feeling. But you also have this safe feeling.”
The Zecchinellis’ push for a safe reopening goes beyond keeping the business alive. In 1918, just months after the original Wayside opened, Brian’s grandfather Germinio died from the Spanish flu.
Germinio worked in Barre’s granite sheds, where the dusty air predisposed workers to respiratory conditions. The Granite City alone lost around 200 people in that pandemic, Brian said.
In 2018, the Zecchinellis celebrated the Wayside’s 100th anniversary. To mark the personal and historical significance of the year the restaurant opened, they commissioned a Spanish flu memorial, one of just a handful around the world, that now sits at Barre’s Hope Cemetery. The granite bench faces the northernmost section of the cemetery, where several headstones — including Germinio’s — mark a death year of 1918.
“It was called the forgotten flu,” Zecchinelli said, “and we wanted to make sure it was never forgotten.”
Today, Zecchinelli refers to the Wayside’s staff as his “extended family.” The limited indoor dining, along with the takeout system they eventually established, has allowed the owners to keep all of their employees on staff. Now, Zecchinelli says he and Karen are working to ensure their team keeps safety at the forefront.
“We’re in a constant mode of education,” he said. “We don’t want to let folks relax to the extent that something happens that we might have to close the Wayside again.”
