Sharon's adds features

Jan. 6—Sharon's Country Diner has been a part of the Sampson community for many decades as one of the best hometown restaurants to sit down for a meal. Customers now will have the luxury of enjoying their well-known dishes wherever they are.

That leads into the burning question of what exactly does that mean? To put it simply, Sharon's has introduced a new way to serve their customers thanks to delivery services they're operating through DoorDash. This addition was part of an ongoing process that current owner, Shirley Jones, introduced to further bring modern accommodations to those they serve.

"Sharon's Country Diner has been in existence for over probably close to 50 years," Jones said. "Mrs. Sharon — the previous owner — she was just a cash-based restaurant, there was no credit cards, no accepting credit cards, no Instant Pay and definitely no delivery service."

"When I took over as new owner, I wanted all those, so I implemented the credit card machine services and everything we have related to that," she added.

It was while including those updates that the idea to use delivery and DoorDash came to Jones. She has been providing DoorDash deliveries for a few months now, starting in the latter half of last year.

"That just came to me as something I decided I wanted to add since I was doing everything else," she said. "Now that it's been implemented, we've been doing DoorDash for four months."

That decision turned out to be an excellent choice as the reception, in Jones' own words, has been "super popular!"

"Oh yeah, it's been working out for us tremendously," she said. "It's helped a lot as well because, even on days when we're slow with customers coming in, I think it's become more convenient and reliable for those days."

"Since we've started DoorDash we've found that we get like three times as many customers getting DoorDash because they don't feel like getting out and about or maybe they're trying to avoid getting sick," Jones said. "Whatever the reason, some just rather get it delivered to them, either way, it's been super popular."

As for her other reasons to bring this new feature to Sharon's, the value of their customers, both new and old, was more than enough reason for Jones.

"I just have to say that Sharon's Country Diner appreciates all our old and new customers," she said. "We value them tremendously and that's why we're offering the convenient service of DoorDash, as well as credit card and instant payments."

"Now they won't feel like they have to run out and get cash whenever they need to pay," Jones added with a laugh.

Reach Michael B. Hardison at 910-249-4231. Follow us on Twitter at @SamsponInd, like us on Facebook, and check out our Instagram at @thesampsonindependent.