The owner of all Subway restaurants in Kamloops will have all nine of them closed by the end of today.

Grayden Flanagan says he had closed six of them earlier on in the pandemic, and had restaurants still open on the North Shore, in Sahali and in Dallas. The added closures were decided, he says, after a family friend was hospitalized with COVID-19.

“It’s just a matter of wondering how long it will take until someone gets sick in your stores. There’s restaurants all across this country and takeout businesses that are shutting down because someone gets sick. And you know, having someone go home, get someone else sick who they love, and then there’s some complication and that person ends up passing away or something, I’m not sure if I want to have that on my conscience for the rest of my life.”

Flanagan has 90 employees at the nine Subway restaurants in Kamloops.

In an incident unrelated to his businesses, Interior Health put out a public warning late last month after someone with COVID-19 had visited a Subway restaurant in Cache Creek. IH did not say if that person was a customer or an employee.

Flanagan says he doubts any restrictions in place right now will be lifted until well past the summer, and adds the federal government’s massive bailout program has not provided support to his business in any way.

“It’s just a smoke and mirror show. I’m speaking for myself, maybe most businesses would be able to comment on this too, but there’s just been basically nothing,” he says.

“You’ve been given subsidies but if you’ve had to shut down, you don’t have sales, you don’t have staff, it doesn’t make any sense. This new wage subsidy is basically asking you to rehire people so that they can make 20 per cent more than if they were on EI. If you don’t have sales and you don’t have staff, that doesn’t help.”