Restaurant owners in the Lansing region look forward to attracting more visitors
Starting Friday, bars and restaurants in Michigan can be 50 percent open.
On hearing the news, John Coscarelli, owner of Relli’s Italian restaurant in DeWitt, said, “There was excitement with a little … fear” because “trying to get employees back to work … now Finding employees is a struggle. “
Lauren Shields
Regarding the preparation for doubling the capacity, however, Coscarelli said, “We have closed part of our dining room to stay at 25 so we need to go through that part of the dining room and clear out the tables and reserve those that are unusable. “
Lauren Shields
Joel Dillingham, owner of Looking Glass Brewing Company, says he’s also very grateful for the opportunity to bring more people to their places.
“We had to keep people waiting … sitting in their cars waiting for us to text them to tell them to come in,” Dillingham said.
Lauren Shields
The average wait was about an hour at 25 percent capacity, but Dillingham said it should drop to 45 to 30 minutes.
“With the 6 foot spacing for social distancing purposes and the maximum of six people per table, unfortunately, there’s not much we can do to add seating … but we’ll definitely have about 14 more seats than we had last week,” said Dillingham.
Lauren Shields
Dillingham said all his staff are back to work as indoor food is slowly returning to normal.
“We actually hired two more kitchens and three more waiters,” he added.
Lauren Shields
Coscarelli said he was grateful to the customers and staff who came back for their help and support.
“Hopefully we can all get through this in one piece,” he said.
Lauren Shields
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