A South Carolina restaurant partially reopening for dine-in customers is keeping the tables compliant with social distancing guidelines by filling the dining room with blow-up dolls.
The Open Hearth restaurant in Taylors closed its dining room on March 17th due to the COVID-19 pandemic and was allowed to reopen this week with a reduced capacity and a requirement that customers are seated six-feet apart.
The owners of the eatery, Paula Starr Melehes and her husband, Jimmy, said they didn't want the restaurant to look empty when customers came in to eat.
"Instead of using scary, yellow tape or roping off the empty tables, I thought, 'We're going to make this restaurant look full,'" Melehes told WYFF-TV.
Melehes said she ordered "the G-rated kind" of inflatable dolls from Amazon, dressed them up like customers and seated them at tables that would be off-limits to diners.
"My grandson told me they look kind of creepy," Melehes said. "But, I think, when people walk in, they're going to laugh."