Wisconsin’s Omicron Restaurant selling ‘corona’ T-shirts

WEST BEND, Wis. (WFRV) — If only the rules of first-come, first-served applied to naming new variants of COVID-19, as one restaurant in Wisconsin now shares a name with the virus’s newest variant.

Omicron Family Restaurant says it offers something for everyone and includes multiple choices in its cuisine, which includes American, Greek, Italian and Mexican foods.

The restaurant is in West Bend, which is about 40 miles north of Milwaukee.

Omicron Family Restaurant, serving the community for more than three decades, is currently open seven days a week for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The owner tells NewsNation affiliate WFRV that his father, Bill Tsiampas, and uncle, John Tsiampas, started the Omicron restaurant together and have been in the restaurant business for more than 50 years. They both came to America when they were 14 years old.

People apparently come in and take pictures with the sign. The restaurant also ordered custom T-shirts to help embrace the correlation between the new variant and the restaurant’s name. The shirts will only be available at the Omicron Family Restaurant starting after Dec. 13.

There have been numerous COVID-19 variants, with delta previously garnering the most attention. The newest variant, ‘omicron,’ was named after the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet. On the WHO’s tracking page, there are five variants listed:

• Alpha
• Beta
• Gamma
• Delta
• Omicron

Now, why did they skip from delta to omicron? The New York Times says some of the letters were skipped for various reasons. ‘Nu’ was reportedly too easily confounded with ‘new.’

More information on the restaurant can be found on their website.