CT Restaurants Celebrate End Of Capacity Limits

CONNECTICUT — Connecticut restaurants are gearing up for their first day without coronavirus capacity limits in a year. Friday brings the end to the 50 percent restaurant capacity limit and the beginning of an industry on the long road to recovery.

Friday was an important step, but it may be three to five years for the state’s restaurant industry to fully recover from the pandemic, said Scott Dolch, executive director of the Connecticut Restaurant Association.

“Obviously some of these stimulus packages are going to help, but I do worry about the next six to eight months to make sure every small business is given the opportunity to get back on their feet and get put back on a pathway to recover,” he said at a news conference Thursday.

There are more than 8,000 restaurants in Connecticut that employed more than 160,000 people before the pandemic, said Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz. She encouraged restaurants to still apply for Paycheck Protection Program loans because funding is still available.

“We want the people of Connecticut to know how important they are to our economy and hope that… people continue to support restaurants, not just by curbside pickup and takeout, but also by coming in and enjoying beautiful restaurants,” Bysiewicz said at a Thursday news conference.

A key part of capacity limits, mask use and other precautions is to build consumer confidence that restaurant dining is safe, Gov. Ned Lamont said.

“We had to do everything we could to build peoples confidence so they wanted to come back to the restaurants, they wanted to come back to eating indoors… and that’s how you get the state back and going again,”

Lamont has received both of his vaccine doses and said he dined indoor Saturday night.

“If it's a warm spring day, I prefer to be outside, but I feel very confident,” Lamont said. “Look at the efforts being made here to keep you safe.”

Bysiewicz isn’t fully vaccinated yet, but said she would go back to indoor dining once she was. In the meantime she has done outdoor dining and takeout, she said.

One hope for the association is that expanded outdoor dining comes back for 2021 and beyond, Dolch said.

“We saw our towns worked so closely with our restaurants to be open to using a parking lot to, to suing a grassy space,” Dolch said. “That’s huge, and we hope we can continue that, we’re working with our legislatures now to try to make that a reality beyond April 20.”

Lamont’s emergency powers are scheduled to expire April 20.

At this point there are few restaurant employees who have received a coronavirus vaccine, said Dan Meiser, chairman of the Connecticut Restaurant Association and owner of several restaurants. Restaurant employees tend to be younger. He estimated that three out of his 165 person staff had received a vaccine.

Strict mask use, social distancing, sanitation and other precautionary measures have helped with employee confidence, Meiser said.

“There’s a comfort level form our teams, they’re all back in the restaurants, and they’ve been through you know months and months and months of indoor dining safely,” he said.