Renowned US restaurant adds mannequins to help with social distancing

A renowned American restaurant has installed a number of finely-dressed mannequins at its tables to help it deal with social distancing for its reopening later this month. Although business restrictions are set to begin easing in some parts of Virginia on Friday, restaurants can only serve dine-in customers in an outdoor space. “When we needed to solve the problem of social distancing and reducing our restaurant’s occupancy by half, the solution seemed obvious — fill it with interestingly dressed dummies,” chef and proprietor Patrick O’Connell said in a statement.