Manco & Manco, the beloved Jersey Shore pizza mainstay, has temporarily closed its locations on the boardwalk in Ocean City, NJ, after three employees tested positive for COVID-19.
When stores reopen, stores will no longer sell slices to limit human contact with food.
Employees tested positive in the past week and two of them are asymptomatic, the pizza maker said in a statement on its Facebook page Tuesday night.
Manco & Manco operates three stores on the Ocean City boardwalk at 8th, 9th and 12th streets. The statement did not say which stores the employees worked at.
All three locations are being professionally cleaned and the owners are working with the Cape May County Health Department.
New Jersey was one of the hardest hit states when the new coronavirus pandemic spread to the United States, but the infection rate has decreased in recent months allowing parts of the state to reopen after the closings. Infections in New Jersey topped 175,000 this week with more than 13,600 deaths.
Manco and Manco said employees are in quarantine for 14 days, following public health guidelines.
The chain’s location at Somers Point was unaffected and remains operational, the owners said.
There are likely to be no runners running down Broad Street, no Philadelphia marathon, no Thanksgiving parade, and no Mummers parade in the coming months, as Philadelphia said Tuesday that all major public events would be canceled until late February. NBC10 informs Miguel Martínez-Valle.
The pizza maker initially planned to reopen the boardwalk locations on Wednesday with improved security procedures. They included requiring employees to wear masks at all times, frequent cleaning of workspaces, daily temperature checks for staff, and the use of a UV-C light to disinfect high-contact areas.
However, early Tuesday night, the pizza maker announced that it will require mandatory testing for its employees, and all restaurants on the waterfront will remain closed until the test results are received on Saturday.
Perhaps the most shocking change will come in the temporary halt to pizza slice sales. The store will only sell whole pizzas to “limit employee contact with food,” the store said.
“We want both the public and our customers to be able to make an informed decision and have all the facts before ordering their favorite pizza,” the statement read.
“The safety of our staff and our loyal customers is paramount.”
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