Suburban Bar & Restaurant Owners Fear Ramifications of Indoor Restrictions
The empty interior of the Elgin Public House restaurant in Kane County. (SOURCE: Facebook)
Governor JB Pritzker’s announcement Tuesday banning indoor service at bars and restaurants in four suburban and south suburban counties beginning this weekend has left many bar and restaurant owners scrambling to survive the latest shutdown.
In suburban Elgin in Kane County, about an hour west of Chicago’s loop, Greg Shannon and his wife have operated the Elgin Public House for 15 years. When word of the Governor’s restrictions due to the latest rise in the coronavirus pandemic reached him Tuesday, Shannon said he felt hopeless.
Shannon says he has spent through all of his savings and a federal PPP loan to keep the business open and now faces an uncertain future.
“You hope and you pray that you’re allowed to get open and running,” he says. “But after 8 months, I don’t have the money to pay people or to pay rent.”
The Shannon’s have already closed their Grumpy Goat Tavern at The Highlands Golf Course in Elgin.
Shannon says he currently employs around 28 people, down from around 65 this spring and he says he will likely have to lay more off.
He is critical of the state for what he calls an “arbitrary” decision to shutter bars and restaurants to indoor service in late October when outdoor dining becomes more difficult.
“We put a [makeshift] patio in our back parking lot. With that and delivery and curbside pickup, even with the limited tables inside, we were only doing 30% of usual sales,” he says.
Shannon says he’s skeptical of the insistence of state officials that bars and restaurants are large causes in the state’s growing positivity rates.
“[Contact tracing] doesn’t show grocery stores or early voting lines,” he asked. “I have not seen one case anywhere near our restaurant. We scrub our restaurant every night. I’m skeptical of anything the government says at this point.”
On the other side of town, Café Roma owner Frank Redisi has been in business 13 years. He says restaurant owners feel targeted by the state.
“You don’t want to put people at risk if it’s dangerous,” Redisi says. “But at the same time, you really need to be in business to survive. In the food service industry, you can’t work form home. Without being open, it’s really going to hurt a lot of people.”
Redisi says he has a patio that he has ordered a larger covered enclosure for, but it likely won’t be in place for another 6-8 weeks.
“It’s already pretty much unusable outside,” he says.
“It’s like, ‘geez, what do we do?’ I’m gonna have to lay people off again, the unemployment is barely going to be enough for them to get by,” he says. “The business is barely hanging on.”
Redisi, too, is critical of the Governor’s rationale behind the closure.
“It just doesn’t feel right,” he says. “It feels very arbitrary. You can fly on a plane but you can’t go to a restaurant.”
UPDATE (3:54 P.M.):
At his COVID-19 briefing Wednesday afternoon, Prtizker challenged assertions the state was acting arbitrarily. He held up 12 studies that he said show bars and restaurants are, in fact, a major spreading location for COVID-19.
“It’s disconcerting that people want to lie about it or just not believe the facts,” Pritzker said. “We’re not making arbitrary decisions.”
Local officials are concerned about the length of the upcoming restrictions.
“I anticipate that the longer these restrictions last the more stressed our family owned businesses will become,” said Elgin Mayor Dave Kaptain. “I also have long term concerns for the employees of these businesses and their ability to keep up with utility bills and mortgages.”
It’s not just a problem for Elgin, as DuPage County is also impacted. Will and Kankakee counties are facing restaurant limitations for the second time this summer.
“While we understand the Governor’s concern over the rise in COVID-19 cases in DuPage County, it appears that restaurants and bars are being singled out without the support of tracing data indicating that consumers are more at risk while dining out than shopping in big box stores or buying groceries,” said John Quigley, President & CEO of the Elmhurst Chamber of Commerce in DuPage County. “This increase is not unlike what communities across the country experienced four to six weeks after the Memorial Day and Fourth of July holidays when families, friends and neighbors gathered just as they did again during the Labor Day holiday.”
In a difficult time, Shannon urged people to support local restaurants.
“People need to call for delivery, people need to call for curbside pickup,” he said. “I have so many friends who are hurting, we’ve gotta go to all of them. We all have to figure out a way to stay alive.”