There is now a product that one small business claims could revolutionize indoor dining during the pandemic.
A Bay Ridge restaurant struggling to make ends meet is taking a chance on a device that it hopes will benefit others.
Facing potential closure, Fred Urban is looking for anything that could help his 14-year business, Schnitzel Haus.
"Once the temperatures go down, 40s, 30s, no one is going to want to sit outside. So, investing money into a shelter outside I think is kind of pointless. We need to get back indoors and back to normalcy,” says Urban.
That's when he reached out to his friend John Kosciusko who owns Nanovo Solutions. The company is currently manufacturing an American-made device that he says is backed up by scientific research.
“The University of Florida Department of Medicine and they tested it, and they found within 15 minutes 74% of the SARS, COVID-2, SARV2, COVID-19 was deactivated, within an hour it was 97% gone. 24 hours later it was undetectable,” says Kosciusko.
The product is odor-free and only uses enough electricity to power a light bulb. Urban didn't just take his word for it, he took it home and noticed it made a big difference for his allergy-prone daughter.
"Three days later, she wasn't coughing, she wasn't sneezing. As far as killing COVID, it's nothing that we could see, but this was clearly something that was positive from an allergy standpoint and cleaning the air,” says Urban.
The Bay Ridge business owner hopes if enough businesses use one of the units it would convince the city or state to increase seating capacity from 25%.
Unfortunately, there is a high demand with a wait list for the units.