BY DANI TIETZ
dani@sjodaily.com
When Friday May 29, 2020 arrives, it will have been 74 days since people could gather for a sit-down meal at their favorite restaurant in Illinois.
Still, as Illinois moves into Phase 3 of the Restore Illinois plan, dining out will take on a different atmosphere. Indoor seating will be closed, parties will be limited to six, or fewer, disposable silverware will be provided and waiting areas must be closed.
For some restaurant owners, offering an outdoor dining opportunity is something they are familiar with. Two days before the beginning of Phase 3 has some restaurant owners still wondering how they will be able to make outdoor dining a possibility while others say it is not something they want to deal with.
Mayors in small towns in East Central Illinois have been working with local restaurant owners since Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced seven days ago that restaurants could host outdoor seating.
St. Joseph’s Mayor Tami Fruhling-Voges updated the St. Joseph Board of Trustees on progress Tuesday night. All downtown businesses in St. Joseph, including the seven food vendors located downtown, are allowed to open when Illinois reaches Phase 3.
Fruhling-Voges reported that residents had asked about the possibility of closing down Lincoln St. to accommodate seating for restaurants, but she wanted to keep in mind that customers going to businesses like Chittick Family Eye Care, Wagner’s Sign and Apparel and Salon 192 would also need access to their destination.
She said that even restaurant owners were unsure that offering outdoor seating was the right approach for their business at this time.
Scratch, which was closed for a month, just reopened its doors on May 13. “She wants to keep her curbside, because she’s getting more business from curbside,” Fruhling-Voges. “She doesn’t feel she can manage that outdoor seating situation.”
But other establishments, like El Torro and Geschenk Boutique and Coffee and Tea Haus, are planning to offer an outdoor dining experience.
To accommodate those businesses, the Mayor suggested to the board that Lincoln could become a one-way street, moving from east to west temporarily. She cited that it would slow traffic through that area while also limiting the number of cars traveling down the road, providing a safer situation.
Geschenk will utilize its outdoor space in the back of the building while also setting up coffee tables along the side of the building.
The Village would also accommodate El Toro by giving it a few parking spaces in front of the building while doing the same for Roch’s on the south side of its building.
The Wheelhouse, which offered outdoor dining prior to the pandemic plans to open eight dining tables, offering three seating times at 5:30, 7:00 and 8:30, closing the doors at 10 p.m.
Fruhling-Voges said it is important that there is still room for, and a focus on, curbside for the restaurants that offer it.
“All the businesses seem very willing to compromise and work with one another to allow everybody to take advantage of more opportunities to start bringing in more sales. So, that’s a good thing,” she said.
Additionally, the Village of St. Joseph plans to extend an event liquor license without additional fees to the establishments so that they can serve alcohol outdoors.
“I’m confident that all of our business owners in St. Joseph are responsible and will do all that they can to keep our community safe,” Fruhling-Voges said in an email. “It’s been amazing to see the local support from our residents during this shutdown. I encourage their continued efforts and patience as we navigate our way through this opening process.”
The Village of Mahomet will take a similar approach to its liquor license modifications during the Illinois stay-at-home mandate.
“We are getting creative and trying to support them as much as possible with both the liquor licenses and some, I guess, additional freedoms or relaxing of some things,” Mayor Sean Widener said at a board meeting Tuesday night.
Widener, having come off two meeting with the Reopen Mahomet Restaurants Task Force, which included members of the Mahomet Chamber of Commerce, JT Walker’s owner Justin Taylor, and property owners Jill Guth and Mark Kesler, said that the Village is willing to work with local restaurant owners, particularly those dine-in establishments that had been hardest hit, to find solutions to make the transition to Phase 3 easier.
“I think what you’re gonna see is more sidewalk cafe type of arrangements,” Widener said.
Some restaurants, like JT Walker’s and Project 47, owned by Taylor, are set up for outdoor seating. Taylor said that he will use the outdoor seating areas that they already have, moving a few things around to meet the guidelines.
The only restaurant located in the old downtown Mahomet, Walker’s has a unique situation where they could also put tables on the sidewalk.
“The main thing for this is going to be weather dependent,” Taylor said. “That’s the big problem for a lot of the restaurants; even if they can figure out what to do with outside seating, you have to have staff and have people ready to go, and then if it rains and an hour later it’s super nice out and people start coming out, you’ve got to figure out what you are going to do with your staff.”
While having the opportunity for outdoor seating is exciting for businesses, Taylor said that there is more that is being taken into consideration by restaurant owners.
No matter what the outdoor dining or curbside situation is, all restaurant owners in Illinois have a few more financial worries looming overhead. By July 1, they will be required to pay a $10 minimum wage to employees, a $.75 increase over the $9.25, a $1 increase that was mandated Jan. 1, 2020.
Mahomet Subway’s owner, Satesha Patel said that the road to $15 an hour by 2025 will hit small businesses hard.
“Increased wages are catastrophic for small businesses like ours,” he said. “We are locally owned and operated and the corporate will help with national emergencies and pandemics but when the issues are local, we’re on our own. So increased wages is not something corporate has propriety on.”
Patel has been working with his landlord, Mark Kesler, to figure out how Subway can offer outdoor seating until customers can eat inside again.
“We will have to purchase new outdoor tables and chairs or benches,” Patel said. “This will be expensive. I am also trying to figure out if we can do something permanent since we will be investing in the new outdoor furniture.”
The Reopen Mahomet Restaurants Task Force is offering $1,000 grants to dine-in restaurant owners who want to offer outdoor seating to help cover the cost of additional expenses. Widener said that there will be an application process that will go through the Task Force for approval.
According to Village Administrator Patrick Brown, Los Zarapes is working with the building owner Jill Guth to try to offer outdoor seating that will also be ADA compliant. Last week, Los did not plan to host an outdoor dining experience. Brown said that because of the tight schedule, outdoor dining will not be available this weekend.
Brown also said that Breaking Taco is excited about the possibility of expanding its outdoor dining area with the help of the grant.
Filippos, on the other hand, will stick to the no-contact curbside pick-up system it instituted early on in the stay at home order.
“Our priority is safety and making good food,” Brigi Paris said.
Increased food prices and consistency in food availability is something that local restaurant owners have had to deal with over the last nine weeks.
Filippos said that they have not raised their prices much, knowing that everyone is hurting at the moment.
Billy Bob’s of Ogden has had to change its menu prices twice, though, to help cover the costs.
Owner George Woodard wrote a letter to the Champaign County Board, explaining the current state of business.
“The current restrictions in place for in-house dining allows only carry-out orders, and the complete loss of income from bar customers has severely impacted my business hours and our operations are down 33-percent,” Woodard said. “This in turn, caused total receipts to be down 70-percent. Most of my staff is currently laid off, but to keep up with the carry-out business, I still have to keep enough employees on duty to fill orders, this has only resulted in a 24-percent decrease in labor cost.”
Woodard said that the cleaning costs associated with reopening would also cause hardship for his business.
A consistent observation among restaurant owners,Obie’s Artic Chill in Oakwood said that beef prices have doubled and pork prices are near 40-percent more than what they previously were.
Obie’s has also seen an additional $500 per week increase since the first minimum wage increase, saying it will be difficult for businesses to withstand the full increase.
Obie’s will continue to follow the state of IDPH guidelines along with the Vermilion County Public Health District guidelines through cleaning, wearing masks and marking six-feet distance for customers.
Oakwood’s Mayor Clayton Woodard said that his community has taken the COVID Pandemic very seriously.
“The Village of Oakwood has followed the directives of the Governor and will continue to do so to the extent the civil liberties of our residents and business owners are not violated,” Clayton said. “We will make every legal reasonable accommodation necessary within our municipal powers to support our businesses with the continued concern for public health.
“We, as a community, have taken the COVID Pandemic very seriously. We have tried to be very understanding and compassionate as to the extreme stress this epidemic has placed on our residents, businesses, and employees and first responders. We are very grateful for the dedication to public service our employees and first responders have displayed during this unprecedented time.”
