After Parker closed in March, Quest Food Management Services workers abruptly stopped returning to school to prepare two meals each day for the Parker community. Quest workers are not Parker employees––they are employed by the company Quest–– and are not receiving their salary while Parker remains closed. All of Parker’s Quest workers were furloughed––a temporary layoff from work with an understanding that the worker will return to their job eventually––for four to five weeks beginning one week after Parker closed.

Being furloughed is essentially an unpaid leave, but it allows workers to apply for unemployment during that period. Applying for unemployment entails receiving a temporary income from the government, which is what most Quest workers chose to do, according to Executive Chef Zac Maness. 

Before that furlough period, Parker tried finding ways to keep its kitchen staff busy while Quest was getting their plan for the future in order. “Ultimately it’s our decision on how we want to use our vendors,” Parker’s Chief Financial Officer Bob Haugh said. “It’s also important to know that we’re longtime partners with Quest, so anything that we’re thinking about we always share with them in advance. We talked through it with them and tried to figure out how they were going to take care of their employees. To the extent that we could help, we helped out a little bit, but nothing too significant.”

In the weeks following Parker’s temporary closing, Maness and some of his staff went to Parker to remove any food items that would get old, and prepared food for when Parker was scheduled to return a few weeks later. Once Parker announced it was closing for the rest of the year, Maness had to go in and clear out everything he had planned for the remainder of the year, and freeze certain items for the following school year.

On April 20th, four to five weeks after initially furloughing its employees, Quest was granted the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) by the U.S. government, allowing its staff to be put on payroll for eight weeks. These eight weeks extend into late June, which gives Quest workers full salary beyond the end of the school year. “Most of my staff work until school gets out on a typical year. They would work until the week after graduation in June,” Maness said. “So this is giving them payment into the summer which is farther than most of them would be working anyway.”

Maness and his staff have spent the last few weeks virtually figuring out their budget savings from this year and how that can transfer unused money to next year’s budget, as well as planning their schedule for the next school year. At this point, they are treating the situation as if they are already in the summer months planning for the upcoming year. 

Upon hearing the news of Parker’s closing in March, Maness was worried some of his staff would lose their jobs because of the unknown financial situation they were to come across in the future, but Maness’s worries have been put to rest. “They will get paid beyond the date that they normally would have been working,” Maness said, “which is beneficial.”