This restaurant uses dolls to ensure customers adhere to social distancing

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The Open Hearth restaurant hasn't served a dine-in customer since March 17, but on Tuesday night, owners were hoping for a full house — well, sort of.

Paula Starr Melehes and her husband, Jimmy, have carefully followed all of South Carolina's guidelines for reopening the popular restaurant, including making sure customers are seated at least 6 feet apart.

That makes for a lot of empty tables. "Instead of using scary, yellow tape or roping off the empty tables, I thought, 'We're going to make this restaurant look full,'" Melehes said.

She ordered blow-up dolls from Amazon — "the G-rated kind," she said — dressed them up and has them seated at all of the tables that won't be occupied by real customers. "My grandson told me they look kind of creepy," Melehes said. "But, I think, when people walk in, they're going to laugh."

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