You won’t be able to get your fix of tacos and burritos at Senor Froggys in Kamloops next week.

That is because owner Rob Stodola is giving all of his staff a week long, paid mental health break, next week, after a roller coaster of a year with COVID-19 restrictions as well as wildfire smoke in the area.

“Frankly people are burned out, I’m burned out, the staff are all burned out,” Stodola said, on the NL Noon Report. “We don’t have enough staff that I can simply say ‘okay, let’s have half the staff on vacation,’ and as the owner, you’re never on vacation. I can be away but I’ll get three or four phone calls a day.”

“The only way to do it is to flat out close the stores down.”

Stodola says in 39 years of operation, his family hasn’t ever thought about closing the stores down just so people can get a break.

“But if that is the only way for my family to get a break and most of all for my team to get a break, that’s what we got to do,” he said. “People have bills to pay, people have to live, so we just decided we’re going to do it and we’re going to find out how and get the logistics right after we make the decision.”

The decision to close, he says, was made with the input and support of the staff.

“It is a crazy, unheard of choice. Frankly, I can’t believe that we made this decision and we are doing it,” Stodola added.

“You’ll have to ask me in a couple of weeks whether it was everything I hoped it would be but we have to and that’s been my thought process all though the pandemic, is we have to run based on the reality we are in today not based on an idea that if we just hold on for another couple of months, we’ll be back to normal. This is our normal now.”

Both Senor Froggys locations in Kamloops – downtown and on the North Shore – will be closed from Monday, Sept. until Monday, Sept. 20.

“We know this temporary closure may inconvenience some and for that, we apologize and hope you’ll come back when we re-open [on Sept. 21],” Stodola added.

– With files from Brett Mineer