Starting Friday night, restaurants and bars in North Carolina can serve alcohol until 11 p.m.

It’s a loosening of restrictions from when they had to stop alcohol sales at 9 p.m.

For the first night in months, the drinks will be flowing at Providence Road Sundries until 11pm.

“9 o clock is very early,” Providence Road Sundries Manager Allyson Ertel said. “For dinner people had to come in at 7:30, it was very hard for sports with college football games at 8 o clock, we lost a lot of business because people didn’t want to come in for a quarter of the game.”

Ertel has been the restaurant manager for 10 years.

“We’re looking forward to the restrictions being lifted even more so and needing more staff to accommodate 100 percent capacity,” she said.

The restaurant is hiring, and it is not the only one.

“We are currently in the hiring process for servers and a few kitchen positions,” says Jon Dressler, of Rare Roots Hospitality.

Rare Roots Hospitality runs restaurants like Dressler’s, Fin and Fino and Dogwood Southern Table.

When indoor dining closed, they had to lay off more than 200 employees.

“By far and away the single hardest message that I’ve ever had to deliver because you’re talking to people whose lives and livelihoods are dependent on you and your guests,” Dressler said.

As restrictions start lifting, his restaurant group is preparing.

“We will have an opportunity to feed more people and employ more people,” he said.

Customers are returning, and so is hope.

“This is definitely the first light at the end of the tunnel I’ve seen as a server and it’s a move forward,” she said.