One Ozarks dealership is happy they haven’t had to lay anyone off, but they are ready for a more typical routine after weeks of coronavirus-related restrictions.

Abbi Pinegar-Rose has grown up with her family’s dealership, Pinegar Chevrolet. Now as the marketing director, she continues to think of her colleagues as family.

“It’s a cliché, but it’s a family,” she said. “It’s nice to be around family when you’re worried about things going on. There’s a little bit of camaraderie. We’re all in the same boat. We’ve been saying through all this: ‘We’re all in the same boat. We’re going through the same thing everyone else is going through.’ It’s a sense of normalcy when everyone’s going through the same thing.”

It has been difficult, though.

“It’s odd not to see as many people on the showroom floor or looking at vehicles,” she said in a phone interview. “It’d be nice to just see the customers back.”

“We’re noticing our traffic has slowed down,” Pinegar-Rose added. “Of course, internet and phone calls have picked up. The traffic we are getting is more local and not as far away as it had been before all of this.”

With social distancing recommendations, Pinegar-Rose said employees at both locations were put on half-shifts and, thankfully, everyone still has a job.

“We did not furlough,” she said. “We didn’t fire anybody.”

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When the housing crisis in 2008 occurred, no one was laid off then either.

“It was a slower economy, and everything slowed down,” Pinegar-Rose said. “This is the first time that anything like this (has happened and) we’ve had to adjust things to the point that we have.”

“We’re just hoping to get back to some type of norm with business,” she continued. “We want all of our employees to feel that everything is getting back into the norm and we’re having regular business hours and just kind of getting back to what we know.”

As restrictions lift, Pinegar-Rose said measures are being taken to protect customers and staff, like employees temperatures being taken at the start of every shift, extensive cleaning and plexiglass dividers added at key areas.

As of now, Pinegar-Rose said they are “cautiously optimistic” about going back to normal hours for customers.

“We hope we’re not going to look up and have any additional cases and everything slows back down or have to stop again,” she said. “We hope now that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Pinegar Chevrolet is located at 163 Adair Road in Branson and 769 E. U.S. 60 in Republic. They are open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Saturday with Branson open to 5 p.m. on Saturdays.

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