Several local restaurants reopened dine-in options for the first time this weekend.

“I’m so excited, plus we get to see all of the folks we haven’t seen in so long, our regular guests and visitors,” said Rita Capponi, owner of Grand Central in Palm Springs.

But Bills Pizza in Palm Desert chose to avoid the holiday rush and will open for some dine-in services starting Tuesday, May 25.

“We’re moving forward with new job titles and descriptions and we want to make sure that it’s all in line. We decided to do a soft open after the holiday weekend,” said Timothy Kispert, general manger of Bills Pizza in Palm Desert.

The restaurant’s new job titles were created because of the pandemic.

“We bumped up our front of the house and we’ll have an official person that just sanitizes the areas as the guests leave, we’re hoping to compartmentalize. We’re going to have a lot of detailed singular jobs for people to do,” said Kispert.

While Bills Pizza still has carry out options, they’ve still lost money, and now taking time to make changes.

“This place legitimately holds 98 people max, moving forward we’re going to have seating for 50 people but we’re only going to seat about 35 people,” said Kispert.

Over in Cathedral City, Los Arcos is also waiting to reopen.

“The coronavirus is still out there. it’s pretty much still going on, people are getting infected still and we don’t want actually to open up and infect our whole family. It’s a family owned restaurant. If I go down or my father goes down, we don’t open,” said Jesus Almaraz, owner of Los Arcas Mexican Restaurant in Cathedral City.

But both restaurant staff says they are looking forward to serving dine-in customers soon.

“We’re not a restaurant that’s based on tourism, we’re based on locals. Our bread and butter will always be the locals that take care of us,” said Kispert.

Some local restaurants waiting to reopen dine-in services