Nearly 40 people are without a job because Wine Down Bistro and its neighbor Wine Down temporarily closed down on Friday.
A now former employee said when she showed up on Friday for a managers meeting. The cooks were all outside because they had been laid off, and not long after, she was laid off also.
“The people who have stayed, stayed because we really cared about Georgia and Marcus, and we cared about the business,” Kursty Marshal said.
Kursty Martel was a manager at Wine Down Bistro for nearly four years.
Martel claims for the last year, employees have been paid irregularly, and orders have been sporadic.
“Our grocery order hasn’t been made, our liquor order hasn’t been paid for, so along this whole year we have been dodging people that are looking for their money,” Martel said.
Martel said she wasn’t surprised to hear the restaurants were closing.
“We were all told we needed to file for unemployment, and they had no real indication that they were going to reopen the restaurant. They told us that they financially couldn’t. They got themselves in a financial bind, and that they couldn’t do anything about it,” Martel said.
She claims no one was given a heads-up to look for other jobs or that there was a possibility of the restaurants closing.
“There’s a lot of the girls there that are single mothers that our single mothers and they are literally living paycheck to paycheck. The first thing that they thought of is how am I going to make it to Thanksgiving, and how am I going to make it through Christmas with all of this coming about,” Martel said.
Martel said when the word got out about the closing, someone reached out to help keep the restaurant open.
She said it could lead to a reopening by the end of this year.
Local 3 spoke with the owner, and she said there are plans to reopen, but there is no date set.
