Reopening Restaurants: The Challenges They Face and How to Handle Them

Photo by Krisztina Papp on Unsplash

Written by: Olivia Wieseler

With most of the country on the other side of the coronavirus peak, every state is in the process of reopening. However, there are various guidelines, rules, and exceptions regarding what businesses get to open, under what conditions and when. It looks like restaurant owners are especially in for a challenge.

Most states have reopened indoor dining with a few exceptions. But with this reopening comes a lot more challenges that restaurant owners never thought they would have to face—no one really has experience in coming out of economic shutdown after a pandemic. Most places are limited to opening only a percentage of their total capacity and have to maintain strict sanitation measures as precautions.

Trouble with Social Distancing

One precaution that restaurants, particularly smaller establishments, are finding more challenging is the social distancing measures.

“Restaurants were never designed for social distancing. Restaurants maximize square footage for the most seating. That’s what we’ve always done, and now we can’t do that,” Todd Madlener, president of Coolgreens, told CBS DFW. Coolgreens is a salad restaurant chain with stores in Oklahoma, Texas and Nebraska.

Kate Nicholls, the chief executive of UK Hospitality, told the BBC that a social distancing measure of two meters between tables (about 6.5 feet) would only allow restaurants to make about 30% of their normal revenue. While this estimate regards the hospitality industry in the United Kingdom, it’s safe to say that U.S. restaurants are facing similar challenges.

Most restaurants in different states across the country are being allowed to open anywhere between 30 and 75 percent capacity, as long as they practice certain guidelines. However, opening at only a percentage of total capacity is risky for restaurants not necessarily just because of COVID19 (which will be a risk for a while), but also because of economic feasibility.

“For most restaurants to open and only have 50% of their seats occupied indoors, they’re probably not going to make enough money to stay open — unless they sell a lot of alcohol,” Stephani Robson, senior lecturer at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, told CNBC.

Balancing Customer and Employee Safety

Another challenge many restaurants could face is bringing their employees back to work. New York Eater suggests that many restaurant workers might not want to put their lives in danger quite yet since COVID19 deaths and cases are typically higher in low-income areas—often the home for many restaurant employees. Without guaranteed safety measures, it could be difficult to bring employees back to work.

Even if employees are willing to come back to work, many restaurant owners don’t know if it will be economically practical to hire all employees back at once. According to a National Restaurant Association survey, the hospitality industry was hit the hardest in terms of percentage of unemployed and furloughed people during this time, affecting over 8 million hospitality employees.

Oralis Radilla, owner of Don Mario in Owensboro, Kentucky, found it hard to balance her number of staff members to her number customers. She told the Owensboro Times that while she wants to let in as many customers as her 33% capacity would allow, she has to save some space for enough waiters to provide decent service. But to provide enough waiters, she needs those customers to help generate enough cash flow to pay them.

The number of customers restaurants would receive during the initial phases of reopening has also been questionable. There is no one to say whether tons of people will show up after being cooped up in their own homes for three months, or if people are still too worried to go out to eat. An April Qualtrics survey found that 68% of people are still nervous to dine in. Without these customers, many restaurants are still wary about reopening just yet.

Best Actions for Restaurants to Take

Regardless of these strange new adversities, dine-in restaurants are looking into their options to combat these challenges and increase revenue while maintaining health protocols. Some actions include continued take-out/to-go options, physical barriers between tables, and a shift to implementing the use of reservations to better balance the number of customers coming in.

Many restaurants are attempting to come up with new dine-in layouts—often including permanent or temporary outdoor dining options. Outdoor dining has been considered more acceptable because its natural ventilation. Some cities, including New York, are looking at simplifying the application process for temporary permits so restaurants can set up dining areas on sidewalks or in parking spaces.

Other restaurants are looking to create a hybrid model between grocery and café, especially those who already adopted similar measures at the beginning of the pandemic. Fort Defiance, a bar and café in Brooklyn, has since become Fort Defiance General Store, and owner St. John Frizell told Bloomberg he doesn’t know if it could go back.

Still other restaurants are looking for any source of advice they can get about what to do next. Some are looking to establishments in Asia, which not only have reopened, but have experienced epidemic economies before. Black Sheep Restaurants in Hong Kong published its own “COVID-19 Playbook” to help other stores around the world who are hoping to reopen their dining areas soon. Other organizations like the National Restaurant Association and the Food and Drug Administration have also published resources to help with reopening food establishments.

At the end of the day, reopening restaurants is as much for the customers and the community as it is for the owner and his/her staff. As local eateries find new and innovative ways to meet health standards in an economically savvy fashion, local economies will start to pick up once again. While eating out might not look the same for a while, or ever, it’s important that restaurants can get their businesses going again in a way that benefits their communities and actively keeps them safe.

“It’s not just about putting chairs further apart,” CEO of Legendary Restaurant Brands Greg Trojan told Restaurant Business. “It’s that we’re being safe, and that our guests see that we’re safe.”