Restaurants across Texas are waiting for the other shoe to drop in the form of more restrictions as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.
"We have a clear idea of what we can do, and we can get more creative," Tei-An General Manager Best Ranglek told the Dallas Morning News earlier this month. "We've had this mentality that you can’t get comfortable right now."
Ranglek's comments came before Texas Restaurant Association President and CEO Emily Williams Knight told Fox Business Network that a second shutdown would be the latest hurdle that the industry has sustained — and it can't sustain much more.
Texas Restaurant Association President and CEO Emily Williams Knight, during a Greater Houston restaurant virtual town hall in September
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"As we're trying to encourage consumers to come back into a regulated environment and to enjoy an experience in a restaurant, we are certainly bracing for more impact," Knight said. "And I can tell you that having lived through the spring in Texas, with the restaurant dining rooms being closed, most of our restaurants won't make it through winter with closed dining rooms."
It isn't that restaurateurs aren't trying to survive. In September, 6,500 new restaurants opened, according to a Fox Business News report. Yelp claimed in its third-quarter Economic Average report that new restaurant and food businesses are reopening across the nation "at pre-pandemic levels."
This difficulty is staying alive during the unprecedented business challenges posed by the ongoing pandemic.
The Restaurant Association issued the results of a survey in September warning that half of the eateries in Texas will close by the end of March if federal assistance continues to be stalled.
More than 71% of Texas operators in the survey said they didn't expect their restaurant's sales to return to pre-coronavirus levels in that time.
About 50,000 restaurants did business in the state before the pandemic, but about 15% went out of business before the end of September and another 20% are in real trouble if they don't receive federal assistance soon, according to the Fox News story.
"With any type of closure of dining rooms, we expect that number would cross 40% of our restaurants will not make it through this crisis," Knight said.
