WEBB CITY, Mo. —Roberta Riley is like many who are working in bars and restaurants that are trying to stay open and safe during the pandemic. This involves a lot of sanitizing and cleaning. Riley says it’s all to keep her customers healthy, specifically those more at risk.
“We want to keep this as safe as we can here. We have a lot of elderly people that come in, and we’re all one big happy family. If we lost anyone it would be devastating to us,” Riley says.
She wanted to make sure that her bar, The Longhorn would be safe for everyone, which is why the bar enlisted the help of Enviroteks, a fogging service. Tod Stults, an owner of Enviroteks says fogging is a way to disinfect surfaces.
“It’s taking liquid and breaking it up into tiny, basically almost, I wouldn’t say molecular, but smaller particles, which is very fine, and with a fogging service, it gets in places where normal cleaning can’t,” says Stults.
Riley says not only is it more convenient but more sanitary as well.
“It’s easier to clean, it maybe gets places that we aren’t able to get to, it gets into crevices because it is the fog,” she says.
Riley states that because the bar is located along Route 66, people from all over the country are always coming through, so she’s glad to have extra cleaning measures in place.
“You never know who’s in and out of here, and quite frankly if you’re tested positive with COVID, you’re not maybe gonna remember ‘hey I was in a little bar in Webb City’ to notify us, so this is just an extra precaution that we use,” she says.
Riley adds that it reassures customers that the bar sees their health as a priority
“It definitely gives people a sense of ‘we are trying to do something to get back to some sort of normalcy.”
Stults says returning to normalcy is the main reason he does his job.
“I just want things to be normal, you know I want people to be able to go out, I don’t wanna go back inside the house, and shut the doors and wonder what’s gonna happen, you know how are we gonna pay our bills? You know, I want people to be healthy.”
The bar will be cleaned biweekly to keep the establishment as safe as possible.