The Golden Ball in York will reopen tonight at 6pm (Tuesday 10th August) after customers came to the rescue and offered to pull the pints while staff were forced to self-isolate.
The pub is a community co-operative pub in the heart of Bishophill and manager Hannah Hutchinson, seen waving from her upstairs flat, will be able to keep a socially distanced eye on things while regular drinkers get behind the bar tonight.
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Speaking to YorkMix Radio for tonight’s Late Show with David Dunning, Hannah said: “A couple of our members of staff had symptoms, one of our regulars let us know that they had a positive test too. We were actually testing daily luckily, so we caught everything very quickly.
“One of our members of staff then tested positive for Covid-19 and then a few days later after we closed another one did too.
“So because we have quite a small team, most of our staff had to isolate so we only basically had one member of staff left, who had just managed to dodge the thing.”
The Golden Ball has nearly 200 people involved in the running of the business.
There was a board meeting and the offer came from some of the members, also regular customers, to step in and help.
Hannah said: “So we gathered enough people together and they volunteered to come and run the pub for a few days until our staff have finished isolating, which is fantastic.
“It means that we don’t have to throw any beer or wine away in fact we don’t have to waste stock at all.
“We can just, you know, carry on ticking over until our staff are all safe to come back to work.”