Maneet Chauhan: 'I ... took my pillow, went to my closet, shut the door, just letting it all out'

Celebrity chef Maneet Chauhan and her business partner husband said they "are scarred" from laying off more than 200 employees at their four Nashville restaurants.

"It was a very, very difficult decision for us to make," said Chauhan, a regular on Food Network's "Chopped" who moved to Nashville five years ago.

"There were times we were talking to our team members and I had a tissue box in front of me and ... I was just crying," she said. "I mean, this is your family."

Chauhan and her husband, Vivek Deora, shuttered Chauhan Ale & Masala House, Indian street food restaurant Chaatable, Chinese restaurant Tansuo and modern diner The Mockingbird just days before Nashville's health department closed all restaurant dining in.

The decision came after days of meetings, email exchanges, growing government restrictions and numbers crunching, they said. Plus, two of their employees had fallen ill.

"We were pretty clear where all of this was heading," Deora said.

The management team called an all-team meeting. That's when employees were told they were being laid off. Health benefits would extend through the end of March. They'd get a full final paycheck though layoffs happened in the middle of a pay period.

"It was horrible," Chauhan said.

She and Deora also encouraged employees to take all the food they could carry out of the restaurants.

"We know some of our team members are going to be faced with (food insecurity) because so many of them live paycheck to paycheck.

"We were giving away food because one of the things for us that is unthinkable is in the food industry," Chauhan said, voice catching, "the possibility of having food insecurity."

Laying off employees and the uncertainty of what's next are traumatic for Chauhan and Deora.

"That’s our family, and that’s our community," Deora said.

Newsletter: Stay safe and informed with updates on the spread of the coronavirus

Chauhan added, "The fact is it took us five years to build this family of 250 people ...  (and) in five hours, we had to tell all of them we didn’t have a job for them. We are scarred."

Chauhan said she and her team will do what they can to put the family back together again when the time is right. In the meantime, she said she feels her feelings now and then.

"I try to put all these positive videos out on Instagram. But the other day, it became so overwhelming that literally I grabbed a bottle of wine, took my pillow, went to my closet, shut the door, just letting it all out."

Reach Brad Schmitt at brad@tennessean.com or 615-259-8384 and on Twitter @bradschmitt.