Two years ago, Emily Huener was grocery shopping when she got a text that stopped her in her tracks: "Cancel the bands," it read.

“I felt paralyzed,” Huener recalled. “And it just became, 'What am I going to do?'”

Huener manages music and bands at Celtic pub Fiddler’s Hearth in downtown South Bend. As for most restaurants and bars in the home of the Fighting Irish, St. Patrick's Day is often one of the most successful days of the year for Fiddler's, with co-owner Carol Meehan saying it's twice as profitable as a football Friday would be.

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And two years ago, a day before celebrations for the Irish holiday were set to commence, the rug was pulled out from underneath business owners' feet as dine-in services were halted in an attempt to slow the spread of COVID.

Now, two years later and as the pandemic procedures move into endemic protocols, things have begun to feel a bit more normalized.

“Things have started to feel a little more normal, especially having a full band for St. Patrick’s Day,” Huener said. “It’s been three years since that.”

Area restaurants and bars are once again preparing for an influx of customers ready to eat corned beef, drink dark or green beer, and celebrate all things Irish to get back to some sort of normalcy.

At Fiddler’s, that means live music beginning at 11 a.m. and running all day long, in addition to a limited menu with favorites such as Scotch egg and corned beef and cabbage available.

For Corby’s Irish Pub owner Joe Mittiga, it means mounting the 30-year old stuffed leprechaun above the bar, booking music like the Flying Sweeney’s and making sure he has enough staff to man the often student-packed bar.

“This business was allergic to COVID, like it was completely the antithesis of all the things you weren't supposed to do exactly in what we specialized in,” Mittiga said. “I mean, we were on the opposite ends of the scale, so for us being shut down for so long, and now, I don't take things for granted anymore.”

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At Madison Oyster Bar, owner Dominick Simeri will have green beer on tap and corned beef and cabbage on the menu for the first time in three years, saying things don’t feel completely back to normal yet, but it’s certainly on track to getting there.

“The immediate fear for our health and safety is truly beginning to dissipate,” he said.

Other events also are re-kicking off again this year, with the downtown St. Patrick’s Day Parade, followed by the dying of the river on the East Bank. Villa Macri’s in Granger will host its tent party from 5 to 11 p.m. Saturday, with entertainment and drinks.

But not everything is completely back to normal. Downtown South Bend Inc. is not hosting its tent party or pub crawl this year, with Kylie Carter saying simply they’re erring on the side of caution still.

“We would have needed to start planning (the events) in December and that’s when omicron was presenting concern,” said Carter, who is the senior director of marketing and events for DTSB. “Now things have, thankfully, turned around since then, but at the time, we just didn’t know. Even if we thought it would start looking good, because of what happened two years ago, we were gun-shy a little bit.”

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The pub crawl would take a rotating crowd to area bars in the downtown area, and not having it again for a third year has owners like Mittiga and Simeri feeling disappointed.

“For me, it was great because I got to introduce so many people to the bar that would have never come here other than if they were on the pub crawl route,” Mittiga said. “So it's just three years of not being able to show the bar off to a bunch of new potential customers.”

Although Simeri said he appreciates the non-profit erring on the side of safety, he said the crawl created a sense of community between the area bars in sharing customers rather than feeling like outright competitors.

“People being comfortable parking their cars and being able to move throughout downtown is a big deal,” he said. “And it felt like a community that we're all on a spot, we all get to share and not one of us gets particularly busier than the other.”

But despite the lack of the crawl and tent party in downtown, owners still have plans to bring out all the stops for the holiday, like they have in years past.

“I’m just happy I’m open on Saint Patrick's Day,” Simeri said.

Contact Mary Shown at 574-235-6244 and mshown@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @maryshownSBT and @marketbasketSBT.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: South Bend bars, restaurants prepare for St. Patrick's Day after COVID