FALL RIVER — With Memorial Day about a month away, those summer musts like going to your favorite seasonal coastal restaurants also come to mind. But expect some big changes at seasonal and coastal hot spots this year.

Evelyn’s Drive-in would typically have opened this past Monday, but owners Jane and Domenic Britto are still considering when they will open the Tiverton staple. Likely it will be around May 20, but only for takeout, at least at first, Jane Britto said.

Customers will have to enjoy the view from their cars or take their food home to enjoy as the outdoor seating will also not be in place to eliminate any potential social distancing issues, Jane Britto said.

The owners have been talking about how they will operate to keep customers and staff safe. Some aspects they’re looking at include how people can order without having to come up to the takeout window and what types of signage they will need. “We’re learning as we go along,” Jane Britto said.

Part of that learning process has been looking at Rhode Island Department of Health cleaning and social distancing guidelines to prepare to open. At the moment, Gov. Gina Raimondo’s ban on dining-in at restaurants is in place through May 8, but even if that ban lifted, Jane Britto said she doesn’t expect to open up the dining room initially. Before opening, Evelyn's always holds staff training for the back and front of the house. This year, she said they will probably hold those training sessions via Zoom.

Though no longer a seasonal restaurant, Macray's Seafood, also in Tiverton, is also a local summertime favorite. Mike Napolitano, who is heading into his third summer as the owner of the restaurant, said Macray's has extended the menu way beyond the clam cakes for which it became famous back in the day. Takeout is offered Thursday through Sunday. Napolitano said dishes such as the seafood casserole (made with shrimp, scallops, lobster, white wine, butter and bread crumbs) has become the No. 1 seller. In these times, especially, the dish travels well and reheats well, too, he said.

The dining room is closed at Macray's, but Napolitano said the restaurant has enough space outside for diners to stay more than six feet apart. He took out a row of tables and the line to order is marked off with orange cones, well away from the tables.

Chowder and clam cakes are a seasonal favorite at Flo’s Clam Shack in the Island Park section of Portsmouth. The clam shack opened last weekend and things went great, according to owner Komes Rozes.

“We had a terrific weekend. We had everything set up for the safety of our customers and employees. There was basically a line all day and everyone was doing their part to observe social distancing,” said Rozes. The Portsmouth destination also had a manager from the Flo’s in Middletown, which hasn’t opened yet, assisting customers with the ordering and pick-up procedure.

To keep everyone safe, he said they have installed a plexiglass screen between the order and pickup windows and the lines to those windows flow in opposite directions. "It is a safe and efficient system, even busy."

Flo's also has an instructional video of how the system works for its customers to view in advance of visiting the clam shack. 

The picnic tables are not available for customers to use at Flo's. Instead, customers are sitting in their cars enjoying their meals "old-school" style, Rozes added. 

The Tipsy Seagull, a Fall River summer hot spot, will open at some point, but owner Mike Lund said he's waiting until at least a week after Gov. Charlie Baker lifts the ban on consuming food and beverages inside restaurants. As of Thursday, the ban was through May 4. 

Westport’s iconic summer restaurant The Back Eddy was all set up and ready for its seasonal opening date of March 20. But on March 12, Gov. Charlie Baker issued his order preventing dining-in at food establishments, thus throwing all their plans in a new direction, said owner Sal Liotta.

“I was standing here with the dining room all set up when I heard the news,” added Liotta. Thankfully, the waterfront restaurant hadn’t purchased perishable items yet so Liotta and his core group of kitchen staff regrouped and brainstormed new ideas.

As takeout isn’t a part of the Back Eddy model, the menu wasn’t tailored to items that traveled well or reheated well. So Liotta said they needed to come up with entirely new offerings for takeout. At the same time, Liotta said he had a bunch of conversations with regular customers who have been coming to the restaurant for 21 years to learn what kinds of things they’d like to see on the takeout menu. Turns out, those customers were sick of cooking at that point and ready for some takeout, he said.

Liotta said he was concerned with three things as he started to reshape the business model: Getting sturdy packagaing that could travel well and be placed in customers’ trunks for contact-free pickups; coming up with items that his customers could reheat easily that would still maintain their standards as customers were likely to pick up a couple of days worth of meals; and making sure his core kitchen crew could work and stay whole financially.

In the end, Liotta said the Eddy's workers crafted a varying menu of dishes that represent their style of cooking to offer as takeout. The menu, which changes often to reflect product availability, typically consists of four main dishes, three soups, a couple of side dishes and a couple of desserts. The entrees, priced at $16, are served in quarter pans that are large enough for two, as well.

Now in their fourth week of offering the takeout, Liotta said, “People are thrilled with it. They’re ordering multiple meals and it keeps us in sight of our guests.”

As for dining in at the favorite beach-area restaurant, Liotta said he doesn’t expect that to happen until some time around the end of June. He hopes the bar will open some time this summer, but at least not until July. “Our obligation is to keep people safe,” he said.

Those safety measures include paper masks for the kitchen staff, contracting with a local seamstress to make multiple washable masks for the servers in the front of the house, and though the bathrooms are already touchless, hiring a bathroom attendant to sanitize after each use. “I’m buying mountains of Nitrile gloves and tubs of sanitizing wipes and a touch-free thermometer to check the staff,” Liotta said.

Liotta also said the Eddy will space out the seating in the dining room, likely cutting back from 240 to 120. Though the Eddy doesn’t normally take reservations for smaller groups, Liotta said it will institute that as well since it will have cut in half the seating of a typical summer season. He also said the Eddy will be open a couple of days a week for lunch.

Now that they’ve got a good model working for takeout, Liotta said he expects to continue it in some fashion even after the restaurant opens for indoor dining as some guests still won’t be comfortable dining in. Some of the popular dishes on the takeout menu have included swordfish, brisket and a cod dish with butter beans and kale. The sides include comfort dishes such as macaroni and cheese (a big hit with their customers’ kids) and potatoes au gratin. Recent desserts include fruit crisps with seasonal fruits and rum raisin bread pudding.

While Liotta said he worries about the viability of some area restaurants, he said they can weather this challenging time.

“We’re not going anywhere. We’ll make it work to the extent that we can,” he said. “I’m looking at this as a gone year. If we can break even this year, I’ll be thrilled.”