Shawn, how you doing?
I'm doing great,
thank you for having me on, Dr. Phil.
Appreciate it.
It looks like you're working from your home too.
I am, they shut me down.
I didn't like it but they shut me down
and at the time, like you,
I hated for it to happen
because I've got like 300 employees
and it's important to families and all
but I really felt like I couldn't put those people
in close proximity safely
so I got it.
We first didn't have audience,
we killed the audience.
Then we sent all of our people home to work from home.
Then they shut everything down.
So now I'm shooting from my kitchen
and I've got a one person crew
with my wife doing hair, makeup,
lights, cameras, everything.
It's not ideal
but we go along with it.
You really were resistant to it at the time
when Governor Inslee shut down the whole state, right?
Well, I was just from the standpoint
that he didn't have a plan worked out yet
for the shutdown.
He just immediately went into
lights out by nine p.m. Monday nights.
And we got the announcement Sunday evening
when we were watching
the same press break that they were showing.
And my phone just lit up from my employees, my managers.
They said, boss, what do we do, what do we do?
And I was trying to calm everybody down
and let them know that we're going to see what comes
and work through this
but first and foremost,
I wanted to make sure that they were taken care of.
And it was just pretty much
a heavy handed option that they took.
But your question was why are grocery stores
and airports still open
and you have to shut down?
You just felt like it was not even handed?
No, no, absolutely not
but when you shut things down
just in the blink of an eye,
it doesn't give people a chance to plan
and that entire, the two weeks that I've been watching this,
you can go through Costco or Walmart or Target,
any of 'em
and they're moving like ant hills.
People are just globbing in there,
they're going crazy
buying out every paper product, number one
and every canned product, number two.
If he would've set a date in the future that said,
how 'bout if we get everybody ratched down
by Friday the 27th?
Then restaurants and bars
would have an opportunity to wind their inventory down,
especially the inventories that are perishable.
We had trucks showing up Monday morning
that we had ordered on Friday and Saturday as normal
and now we have thousands of dollars
that are sitting in the coolers.
So what are we all supposed to do with it?
It's our problem
because of a snap decision like that
that he didn't need to make on our side of the state yet.
It was not happening over here at that time.
Right, and are you doing takeout orders at this point?
No, our method doesn't work for takeout orders
for our type of restaurant.
And that's why it focused
and hit so hard on sit down restaurants.
A lot of my friends that have restaurants
that still do takeout orders are closing left and right,
they're dropping like flies now
because they've realized
you can't make enough money off just a to-go.
Right, and as you look at it now
and we're seeing what's happening
with the really steep increase,
I mean it's a hockey stick on the graphs
in some of the epicenters,
including in Washington,
do you feel now that it's right to be shut down,
even though you don't like the method
and the speed with which it was done,
do you think it's right to be shut down now?
Oh absolutely.
And I was taking my cues from my employees
more than anything else
'cause I wanted them to know
that they are valued in such a way.
I've got the same employees I've had
when I opened 24 years ago.
We're a tight knit family in here.
And I would take cues from them in saying,
we're just not comfortable working anymore.
But they all came in to work anxious and ready to go
and work on their paycheck Monday morning.
And so if I had had a threat to them
or if you dare walk out you're fired,
then I would be the bad guy in this.
But since we've done everything we can
to keep our people working for all these years,
this was just a real slap in the face
to the entrepreneurs and the small businesses
in our area.