Letter from A. Paumier & S. Moriarty, Indecent Risotto - Operating Food Truck during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Dear Mayor Screech and Council.

My name is Andrew Paumier and my partner’s name is Shannon Moriarty. Together we own and operate Indecent Risotto food truck. The reason for this letter is to ask for your help.

Given the current situation with Covid-19 we find our business has pretty much come to a standstill as large groups of people are not allowed to gather. It is these large crowds that we rely on in order to successfully operate our business. We are currently running for contactless delivery and pick up but at best we are only seeing about 10% of our usual sales.

We respectfully ask that if there is public space available, that is under municipal control, that the bylaws restricting us from working there be relaxed so we can open up in a safe and responsible manner. Again the challenge for us is we have no access to the public at all. Being able to operate where people can see us would go a long way to improving sales and the likelihood that our business will survive. Please provide a list of suitable spaces that you would consider suitable for us to operate at. We are totally self contained so we would require no infrastructure support. It if is an area where cars can park we are capable of setting up contactless ordering, payment and food pick up. The second area we are asking for help with is that we would like permission to enter local neighborhoods to provide meal service on a preordered and prepaid basis. It would be similar to how ice cream trucks roam residential streets to generate sales. We would market directly to a specific street or 2. Customers who are wanting to buy our food would have the option to look at our menu and preorder and prepay. If there is a customer that wants to order from us directly at the time we are on their street would be instructed to place their order and pay on line as well. Each household would be given a specific time that their food would be ready for pick up from the truck to eliminate any gathering of people. Proper distancing protocols will be enforced for people approaching the truck for contactless pick up of their food. We of course will be wearing all required PPE and practicing frequent handwashing. We will also be sanitizing the external pick up counter on our truck between each customer. We would limit our time on the specific street to a maximum of 1 hour before moving on to a new location or heading home. Again this would require your help to relax the bylaws so that we could operate on public property in your municipality

Here is a brief outline of the accommodations we have made to keep our customers and ourselves healthy and safe.

• We shut down our business and self isolated for 2 weeks in the middle of March to ensure we were healthy and safe to handle food
• We performed a top to bottom deep clean and sanitizing of our truck before we reopened
• We have set up contactless delivery through 3rd party providers
• For delivery drivers we have contactless pick up
• We do not allow anyone but myself and Shannon on the truck
• We have contactless ordering and payment for our customers who wish to pick up their own food
• We maintain a minimum of 2 meters between us and delivery drivers or customers at all times
• We follow all proper handwashing recommendations both in technique and duration
• Our truck is a fully VIHA certified kitchen that allows for safe food preparation and production
• We wear proper PPE as required
• All contact points with the public are sanitized after each person(ie pick up counter
• We monitor our health daily and if either of us feel even the slightest bit unwell for any reason we will immediately stop all operations for a minimum of 2 weeks or until a clear test states that we are safe to resume work

Please advise on how to proceed!

Thank you,

Andrew Paumier and Shannon Moriarty Indecent Risotto indecentrisotto@gmail.com