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MARIETTA DINER
SERVES THOUSANDS OF
FREE MEALS AS INTRO TO
24/7 DRIVE-THRU
BY THOMAS HARTWELL
It was all hands on deck at Marietta Diner as the
restaurant served thousands of free meals as an
introduction to its 24/7 drive-thru response to
the coronavirus.
A line of cars two lanes wide and a quarter-mile
long held up traffic on Cobb Parkway one late March
afternoon as customers packed the makeshift
drive-thru the diner had set up. Servers, busboys,
managers and hosts — some wearing masks, but all in
gloves — worked together to call in orders to the
kitchen via cellphone or radio as cars with as many as
six people pulled through the parking lot to order.
Considered a local mainstay and open 24 hours a
day, the Marietta Diner attracts locals and customers
from afar. Staff say the response to the diner’s promotion,
which ran that Wednesday and Thursday from
11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and promised a free meal and drink
to all drive-thru customers, had been unbelievable.
Managers told the MDJ the restaurant served
about 500 free meals in those four hours on Wednesday,
and from 11 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. on Thursday, they
had already served 1,500.
Gus Tselios, owner of the Marietta Diner, told the
MDJ that in the diner’s 25 years in Marietta, he’s never
seen the inside of the restaurant empty.
He said restrictions on sit-down dining as
governments aim to stop the spread of the new
coronavirus have hurt restaurants, but a myriad of
restrictions have hurt nearly all households. Tselios
said his restaurant wanted to show people they
would still be serving food but in a way that made a
difference.
“We’ve never run a drive-thru before, so it’s
practice for us, but it also gives us a chance to give
back to the community. ... And it’s a way to maybe
cheer people up through these rough times,” he said.
“This gives people options. They can grab something
to eat real quick instead of fighting at the supermarket
to get something.”
Between 20 and 25 staff directed traffic, took
orders and shuttled bags of food and drinks to
customers in their cars as the MDJ made the rounds
talking with customers. And it wasn’t just Marietta
Diner staff.
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