PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — Two central Aroostook restaurants temporarily closed their doors due to potential exposure to COVID-19, a new development for local restaurants as cases continue to rise across The County.Big Cheese Pizza said it was temporarily closing its Presque Isle and Caribou locations on Thursday and Pronto Burrito its Caribou location on Saturday. Pronto Burrito will open on Tuesday, but there is no set date for Big Cheese Pizza.
Big Cheese Pizza closed the two locations after staff members may have been exposed to someone who tested positive, a restaurant spokesperson said Monday morning. It will continue to be closed as management waits for test results from employees.
Pronto Burrito management said it was closing due to possible exposure to COVID-19. On Monday, management said an employee who came in to work on Nov. 21 had shown symptoms of the virus.
The restaurant closed for the day and proceeded to test all of its employees for COVID-19. All of those tests came back negative, and the restaurant’s Caribou location will reopen at 11 a.m. on Tuesday.
The closings represent a dark turn for a restaurant industry relatively unaffected by the virus compared to the rest of Maine and the United States.
While the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic — including those resulting from Gov. Janet Mills’ civil state of emergency — have caused central Aroostook restaurants to close down temporarily and permanently, these are the first cases of closings because of potential virus exposure.
Pronto Burrito officials said the business would temporarily close its Caribou location due to “possible COVID-19 exposure,” a statement posted to Facebook on Saturday said. The closure came only one month after the fast-casual Mexican restaurant opened on Bennett Drive.
Big Cheese Pizza management announced it was closing its Presque Isle and Caribou locations due to “a possible COVID-19 exposure” on Thursday, in a statement on Facebook. A second post on Friday said the restaurants would be closed at least until the end of the weekend.
“We want to make sure our staff, their families and all our customers are as safe as possible,” the post said. “We will keep you all updated when we know more.”
Staff has sanitized both locations during the closure.
With 95 total cases since March, Aroostook County has had the lowest rate of COVID-19 transmissions in each of Maine’s 16 counties, according to data from the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Yet, The County has not been immune from the COVID-19 spike seen across the rest of Maine. Cases have doubled from 52 on Oct. 9 to 95 on Nov. 22, though that increase was lower than the rise across Maine.
There are 13 active cases in The County, according to the Maine CDC. Pronto’s Presque Isle location in Aroostook Centre Mall had announced it was temporarily closing last Monday, a change the restaurant attributed to the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, including decreased traffic and PPE costs.
“When we decided to open, we did not foresee the COVID-19 situation taking the turn that it has recently,” Pronto Burrito President Jasper Ieronimo said on Monday. “We certainly don’t take closing a store lightly and hope to be able to return to regular operations as soon as possible.”
This is not the first time COVID-19 and its effects hurt Presque Isle’s restaurant industry: the early days of the outbreak saw the permanent closings of Cafe Sorpreso and Cafe Demoiselle — though co-owner Judy Boudman said Sorpreso’s closing was only partially due to the virus.
On Friday, one day after Mills announced she was putting a 9 p.m. curfew on Maine’s restaurants and bars, Presque Isle’s usually busy Main Street was quiet. Irish Setter Pub — known for being one of the latest operating joints in the city with an 11 p.m. closing time — was uncharacteristically barren.
While most Presque Isle residents regularly wear masks in public, some have continued to not do so during the spike across Maine, even in indoor locations like Walmart.
