Several local well known restaurant establishments are considering closing down their in-house dining due to financial stresses caused by the current COVID-19 restrictions.
One current owner tells 99.1 that numerous local businesses are discussing the possibility of closing down in-house dining as early as this next week.
The owner says the current restrictions, although certainly understandable from a health and safety standpoint, aren’t leaving any room for financial stability and are now causing additional internal issues.
“We’ve brought employees back on board and are happy to finally get one step closer to normal,” says the restaurateur. “But as soon as we’ve all done so, many aren’t getting the traffic indoors that we require to keep those employees on board. We’ve had to start considering going back to layoffs, reducing hours, cutting back staff. It’s just not working.”
Chatham-Kent CAO Don Shropshire says he understands and sympathizes with the challenges local restaurant owners are facing, but the current indoor restrictions are handed down by the provincial government.
“There’s no question that our restaurant industry is under stress,” says Shropshire. “What we’ve been trying to do as municipality is be as flexible as we can with the things that are under our control. Supporting the growth of the patios and so on. We actually think that’s been a great improvement and we hope it stays after COVID.”
Unfortunately, Shropshire says those indoor restrictions are out of the municipality’s control.
“With respect to the indoor dining, those are all rules that are set by the provincial government and that’s where those restrictions are. I can understand why our restaurateurs are having some challenges with that, and we’ll do whatever we can to support them. But that is a public health decision made by the provincial government and they’re doing that for public safety reasons, so that’s hard to argue with as well.”
Although some local establishments have found new ways to thrive, 99.1 is told several other restaurant owners feel they’re on the brink of having to close the doors permanently due to the financial burden of the pandemic.
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