We have made the decision to cancel the Guest Chef program for the summer season. This is due to the uncertainty surrounding executive orders in the state of Michigan as it relates to dine-in and restaurants.
The executive orders that have been in place since March 16th in the state of Michigan, and are currently in place until May 15th, indicate that restaurants are not able to offer their dine-in services. We don’t know if these executive orders will be extended or not for dine-in activities.
We had already canceled the guest chef program that was slated to be the first weekend in May with Ben Hunter, and would parlay with the Michigan Tech graduation commencement activities. Michigan Tech had canceled their commencement in late March, and so it didn’t make sense for us to push to have the event even if we were allowed to have dine-in services.
Then this past week, it was discussed at the Lodge if we wanted to push this cool and innovative program with us not knowing if we would be able to offer dine-in services to patrons this summer. The next guest chef week was scheduled for June, and we were to have one each month through October.
If we are able, and feel comfortable, to offer dine-in services later this summer, we will look into the possibility of doing pop-up restaurants with guest chefs.
Until then, we are going to focus on making our bread-n-butter consistently EXCELLENT as a take-out, and eventually dine-in, once we are allowed and feel comfortable to have patrons inside the beautiful and historic Lodge facilities.
We currently are scheduled to open the food and beverage operations at the Lodge for the summer season on April 30th. We will start with take-out, and will open the dine-in activities when we are able and feel comfortable to do so.