SPOKANE, Wash. — In an emotional Facebook post on Friday, the owner of a popular Spokane restaurant expressed her concerns about the survival of restaurants amid Washington Gov. Jay Inslee's latest round of restrictions.
Celeste Shaw, who owns Chaps Diner and Bakery, wrote primarily about the uncertainty that she and other local business owners are facing over the next month.
Gov. Inslee’s new restrictions that went into effect on Wednesday put a stop to all indoor dining at restaurants and bars. This comes as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are spiking across the state. Outdoor dining is permitted, but limited to five people per table, and to-go service is allowed.
The restrictions have put additional strain on the already struggling restaurant industry.
"The conversation about how restaurants will continue to operate, given the rising costs of running them has been terrifying, and I want to remain in denial as we navigate. The reality of letting go is simply to painful," Shaw wrote in part.
Her full post is as follows:
I have to hope that we matter in some other alternative economy; that we are still a thread in the fabric that might unravel if you yanked us from the weave. (Philip Montgomery The New York Times)
Everybody’s saying that restaurants won’t make it back, that we won’t survive. I imagine this is at least partly true: Not all of us will make it, and not all of us will perish. But I can’t easily discern the determining factors, even though thinking about which restaurants will survive — and why — has become an obsession these past weeks. What delusional mind-set am I in that I just do not feel that this is the end, that I find myself convinced that this is only a pause, if I want it to be? The conversation about how restaurants will continue to operate, given the rising costs of running them has been terrifying, and I want to remain in denial as we navigate. The reality of letting go is simply to painful. Shoulder to Shoulder we are all in mourning as we read daily restaurant obituaries.
I'm not sure there is a survival answer, changes have transcended from weekly and daily to hourly.
