Attleboro's JR's Fights To 'Live, Love, Laugh' At Last

ATTLEBORO, MA — Monday was the day they were waiting for ever since the day that may have changed their lives forever.

For the first time in fourth months since the coronavirus crisis hit state bars and restaurants with a devastating fury, JR's Bar & Grill on Pine Street in Attleboro was finally open.

For Stephanie Connors, who owns the bar with her husband, Ray Connors Jr., it was a long, diligent and frustrating process filled with awaiting state guidelines, working hard to meet them, re-imagining the space of a 97-person capacity neighborhood haunt and determining the right time to figure out whether this can possibly work.

"We wanted to do everything by the letter of the book," she told Patch while driving to JR's with her bar manager, Jackie, on Wednesday morning. "We want to follow all the guidelines. We don't want our customers to get sick. We love our patrons. We want everyone to come back when it's a bar again."

For now "it's not a bar, it's a restaurant," — a common refrain Connors said Jackie has to keep reminding regulars who wonder why some things are new, and other things won't be going back to the way they were for, perhaps, a long while.

JR's has added outdoor seating, moved tables around to space them out, put partitions up between those that remain and places plastic between the bar and the nearby tables so customers can only be served with the staff walking around to the dining floor, per state guidelines.

Customers now must order food to be served drinks. The pool tables and dart boards are strictly off limits. The hours are shortened. The staff is a skeleton crew. But some of the friendly faces have returned. And JR's is there for the ones who often don't have anyplace else to be, with the ever present reminder to "Live, Love, Laugh" spelled out on the ceiling.

"We are not by any means a nightclub," Connors said. "We are not a bar scene where people are shoulder to shoulder. We are your neighborhood mom-and-pop, family place. And I say 'family' because the people here are like family. It's that 'Cheers' vibe where everybody knows everyone by name."

How Did We Get Here?

It was 11 years ago that Connors said her husband, who works for a liquor distribution business, made a delivery to a local watering hole with a "For Sale" sign in the window.

"He came home that night and said: 'I think we're buying a bar,'" she remembered.

But it was never just a bar to Stephanie. It was a place where the community could come together, enjoy the good times and lean on each other when times were at their hardest.

"The goal was for it to be what it became," she said. "We've had so many fundraisers for local customers and families who needed it — a family who lost a daughter in a car accident. We wanted a place where we could give back to the community. That's what we bought it for.

"We put our blood, sweat and tears into it. To have that maybe all be gone is scary."

Connors said she met with the staff each week to keep it updated throughout the closure with the intent of bringing everyone back who wanted to return once the place reopened. There were virtual Bingo nights to help support the bartenders while the bar was shuttered, and loyal customers bought gift cards on the faith that they would actually be able to use them one day down the line.

While some of the government programs did not work for the owners for various reasons associated with a business that glides on small margins, part-time staff and nimble allocation of resources, Connors did secure one Small Business Administration loan. She said she tried not to use it at first, but it has since helped fund the safety and patio supplies needed for the reopening, as well as some bills she had put on hold after Gov. Baker ordered the shutdown of all bars and restaurants in the state on March 15.

"I was worried about paying it back if two months down the road this doesn't work out," she allowed.

Announced hours after locking the doors from a busy Saturday night, and two days before St. Patrick's Day, the shutdown was originally supposed to last for three weeks.

"You just felt like you were stuck," she said. "Everything you'd worked for was for nothing. I know how hard it's been for someone to be closed for four months. If there are some bars that potentially won't be open at all this year, I think they will all be gone."

Keeping 'The Family' Together

Connors crunched the numbers and figured out that patio seating alone was not going to do it for JR's. She would have to have the handful of tables filled most of the night, and turn them over every 30 minutes — a foreign concept to the hearty clientele more apt to linger for a couple of hours telling stories of the day that sound oddly familiar to so many of the stories told each other so many other nights. So she knew she had to wait for some indoor seating to be allowed to give herself an honest shot at success.

Traditional bars were originally slated to get the go-ahead in phase 3 of the state's reopening plan, but were quietly shifted to phase 4 in May. When Gov. Baker announced the state was moving into phase 3 as of July 6, he revealed late in his news conference that there will be no phase 4 until there is a vaccine or effective treatment.

Taverns were left to figure out what they would need as a minimum food requirement to qualify as a restaurant and reopen, with some cities and towns allowing operation with food trucks, or makeshift operations like hot dog steamers and personal pizzas, and others clamping down on any place that did not have a fully operational kitchen prior to the coronavirus closure.

"We have some of our customers go to Norton where their restrictions and guidelines are way more lenient and want to know why we have to do it the way we are," Connors said. "Some people are allowed to half-ass it, and when people ask us why 'so and so doesn't make us do it that way' it makes it difficult."

Connors said she is counting on her regulars to be understanding and get used to it.

"Jackie has had to tell them: 'We are not a bar now, we are restaurant,'" said Connors, of the on-site voice of reason, whom Connors had talked with about someday taking over the place. "Rhode Island is three weeks ahead of us, so they can do a ton of things we can't do right now until they let us go back to being a bar."

With virus infection rates spiking across the country — causing even the Northeast states with low rates to tap the breaks on supposed culprit locations like bars — there is no telling when that will be.

"You do keep thinking: What do we do? Are we ready to be done with this?" Connors said. "We had to jump through a lot of hoops to be open. A lot of places have stayed closed. After two days, I don't know. Monday, a lot of people came back. Tuesday, we were slower.

"If they are not going to let bars open until there is a vaccine we'll take these next few months to see if it will be worth it to be open. I certainly hope for that. Or do I just close and sell the building? It's scary.

"We're not sure where this is going to take us."

Patch is looking to tell the stories of local businesses being innovative and battling to make it through during the coronavirus health crisis. If you would like your business profiled, contact Scott Souza at scott.souza@patch.com.