About 350,000 are unemployed in the PA restaurant industry and local businesses are feeling the hit
Restaurants in Pennsylvania are seeing a very hard hit in their industry.
Local businesses are finding ways to make ends meet and keep the business off the ground.
“The restaurant industry is impacted because it was the first industry that was shut down in most states,” president and CEO of Pennsylvania Restaurant and Lodging Association, John Longstreet said.
Longstreet says there are about 26,000 restaurants in the state of PA and 50% of them have closed leaving the other half with only curbside, takeout, and delivery options.
Restaurants in the area like “The Hofbrau” in Canonsburg, have been doing these changes for over a month now.
“Fortunately for me, our product does translate to a pretty good take on it. So we’ve been able to do a decent amount of takeout foods, but it’s still only a percentage of what we initially did,” James Oddi, owner of The Hofbrau said.
Making accommodations like that plays a toll on the business’s profits, making restaurants lose about 90% of their typical income of money.
“We’re only getting 5% of what we are normally at and that’s even 5% might be a stretch. It really is. That’s on like the good days,” Allstar Sports Bar and Grill owner, Ryan Butya said.
Allstar Grill is located in Southpoint in Canonsburg bringing in huge crowds for sports games, karaoke nights, and family dinners.
Having their dining-in doors closed during major sporting events that were supposed to be going on like march madness and hockey playoffs, makes a huge dent in their profits for the year.
Besides losing the ability to sit inside a restaurant and order food, alcohol has been off-limits as well.
“We are we have a bar business that we’re no longer able to do. We just do some takeout beer so we lose the bar business,” Oddi said.
Cutting the alcohol out of the picture means losing the beer cracking, draft pouring, and drink stirring bartenders.
“The survey was from the National Restaurant Association on restaurants in Pennsylvania, 90 and the based on the survey, 95% of restaurants in Pennsylvania, have laid-off workers. And of those 95 that have laid-off workers, the average number of workers they’ve laid off is 85% of their workforce. So, there’s about 300 and it’s in the neighborhood of 350,000 furloughed restaurant workers right now,” Longstreet said.
Both of the restaurants have sent their employees home, leaving only family to cover the shifts. Oddi says as a business owner you have to work every job in your business, and that he does. Cooking, waiting, packing takeout – they have to do it all.
Coming back from something like this isn’t impossible, but the likeliness of it is not great.
“All of 2020 shot for us, it really is, we just got to kind of look for 2021 and hopefully that, you know, it boosted back up so easily here I’d say,” Butya said.
Longstreet does not think that most restaurants are going to be able to recover 100% from this. It will be a struggle to come up from the hole the coronavirus pandemic has dug.
“Pennsylvania’s restaurant and food service industry will lose more than $1.8 billion in sales through through April compared to what was last year,” Longstreet said.
Looking forward, the local restaurants are still wishful thinking.
“I think every business is ready to get back. I think we get back instantly. I think we’re ready to go. I think we’re like, we’re like a caged animal. We’re ready to be let loose. We’re ready to get back out there….We look forward to being back running 100% right out the gate,” Oddi says.
Although they’re ready to jump back in, one big question is uncertain for everyone. Will restaurants ever go back to normal?
“I don’t think anything is going to be the norm is to what we’ve all expected,” Butya said.
