National Restaurant Association Asks Governors to Keep Dining Rooms Open

By now, any franchise brand that was previously hoping for the summer months to bring a return to normalcy after the spring’s widespread shutdowns should be well underway with whatever their Plan B was. Still, restaurant brands are counting on an influx of dine-in customers to revive the flailing industry. Now, as COVID cases are once again spiking across the country and many states are reinstating previously relaxed social distancing orders, restaurants are once again fighting for what many see as their one shot at survival.

On Monday, the National Restaurant Association weighed in with a letter to the National Governors Association and the U.S. Conference of Mayors pleading with the state and city officials to not shut down public dining rooms.

As Nation’s Restaurant News points out, the letter arrived on the same day that a number of states reported widespread violations of local safety guidelines among restaurants.

> Ten venues in New York had their liquor licenses suspended, including Cipriani Downtown in Manhattan, where patrons were seen drinking and standing around tables in front of the restaurant, mostly without masks. Inside, an employee behind the bar had no face covering and patrons were buying alcohol at the bar, in violation of state orders, according to the governor’s task force.

In Texas, bar owners have been more explicit in their defiance of regulations.

> In Texas, hundreds of bars reportedly opened over the weekend in an act of defiance dubbed “Freedom Fest,****” despite a statewide shutdown order that followed a spike in COVID-19 cases across the state. Bar owners said the move was in part to protest that restaurants were allowed to remain open, albeit with limited capacity and safety protocols in place.

In the letter to governor and mayors, the NRA advocated for increased safety protocols and said restaurants that do not comply should be shut down.

“Our industry truly believes that we are all in this together and that any bad actors are not representative of our industry,” the letter said.

According to the NRA, the restaurant industry lost more than $145 billion in revenue between March and July.