The Rendezvous has voluntarily closed its dining room, though it will remain open for takeout and delivery and the shipping kitchen will stay open.

“We thought about doing it last week,” co-owner John Vergos said. “We had a meeting with our staff. With the spikes, it’s just really stressful for us, making sure everyone is safe. The environment is scary right now, and we want our employees to be safe and our customers to be safe.”

“But we hope to reopen soon, maybe a week, maybe two weeks, maybe longer — we’ll see how it goes and when it’s right, we’ll open again,” Vergos said.

The Rendezvous was one of the first restaurants to close in March, a few days before Mayor Jim Strickland ordered dining rooms closed in Memphis on March 20. It later reopened for takeout, then opened the dining room on June 5.

Here’s the statement issued on social media:

We’ve been thinking about this for a while—honestly, since we reopened. We all met last Wednesday to talk through maybe going back to just curbside, delivery and supporting our shipping kitchen. At that time, most, if not all, voted to stay open. 

 Well, this week we’ve decided to close for dine-in.

 Nothing has really changed, except that operating in this environment is hard, stressful and scary. This isn’t political or any sort of statement – it’s just us being tired and nervous for our staff, for our customers and for our community. 

 We will be open for curbside, shipping, delivery, and catering. We truly hope you all understand and will still support us by ordering all. Thank you to all who have support us so far, and we hope that continues.