“A lot of the restaurateurs and chefs that I’m talking to are just about to give up,” Rick_Bayless said. “They’re incredibly discouraged. Nobody knows what to do at this point, because the numbers are so low.”
For 35 years, celebrity chef and restaurateur Rick Bayless has packed his Frontera Grill on New Year’s Eve, an annual tradition for scores of longtime customers at the acclaimed Mexican restaurant in Chicago’s River North neighborhood.
The restaurant industry has been hard hit by the pandemic, navigating closures, indoor dining restrictions, labor shortages, supplier price increases and declining revenue. In 2020, 90,000 restaurants permanently closed as sales fell by $240 billion across the U.S., according to the National Restaurant Association. While the industry showed signs of recovering last year, the one-two punch of the delta and omicron variants has halted the momentum.
Frontera will hit 40 to 50 customers on its best nights this month, Bayless said. He had hoped to fill 145 seats for New Year’s Eve, but sold only 68. In Illinois, 4,524 restaurants received federal grants totaling more than $1.4 billion. But 15,674 applied for nearly $3.5 billion, meaning more than 71% of Illinois restaurants did not receive funds, according to SBA data.
[Most read] Chicago Bears hire Matt Eberflus as the franchise’s 17th head coach: ‘We will do everything in our power to bring a Super Bowl championship back to Chicago’“We are still employing those 140 people, even though we could do with a third less, for sure,” Bayless said. “The only reason we can do that is just because we got federal aid.”
The coalition has been pushing for Congress to replenish the restaurant fund. Such a measure was not included in President Joe Biden’s $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act, which was approved by the House in November but stalled in the Senate. Several other stand-alone proposals, however, are gaining traction.
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