Mr Crinis said it had been a carefully thought out process planning how and when to reopen Diggies and North Beach Kiosk were both closed with employee and public safety in mind.

"We made the decision to close for a few reasons. Our staff were rightly concerned for their own health and safety. And we felt strongly about the message to 'stay home' and didn't want to contribute to the problem by being a place where the community were still meeting up in groups," he said.

"For 15 years we have been a place where people love to meet up and hang out, and despite putting measures in place for social distancing we felt we needed to take a strong stance to change this behaviour".

Mr Crinis said sales did dramatically reduce as genuine fear about COVID-19 hit the community. But that was not the deciding factor behind closing Diggies and North Beach Kiosk.

"We felt Friday was a great time to reopen with school holidays ending. People have now become familiar with social distancing. We've been able to work on increased safety measures including perspex screens. We want to be able to provide our eligible employees with the JobKeeper. We feel the North Beach community are in a good routine of exercising in two's and by offering take away coffee, breakfast and lunch we are providing them a service. We are promoting "surf-ride-roll-coffee-home-repeat"

Mr Crinis said social distancing is likely to be in place for some time and North Beach Kiosk was reopened with that in mind. And the way the business operates has changed.

"We employ 80 people in Wollongong and Kiama and are hoping to keep as many people employed as we possibly can in this time, and we need to open our doors to do so. We've been able to re-employ 35 staff. We have revised our menu to include some of the favourites from the Diggies cafe side plus introduced some other great healthy options".

Diggies in Kiama will open again for takeaway and online orders in two weeks. It was granted a liquor licence on Friday which means it will be able to sell beer, wine and cocktails from 10am to 11pm when it reopens.

Diggies Wollongong won't reopen until social distancing restrictions are eased on restaurants and cafes.

The Illawarra Mercury has launched a Taking Care of Business campaign.

Each day we will highlight a local business who is adapting or evolving to be able to keep operating under these trying times.

If you know of a business adapting, please send us an email titled Taking Care of Business to cos@illawarramercury.com.au.

We have also put a call out and will run a list of cafes, restaurants and clubs who are offering takeaway or delivery on our Facebook page. If you know of an outlet now offering home delivery or takeaway, please let us know and add it to the list.

Here is more about the campaign:

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