Local restaurant opens doors for dine-in but is still concerned for the future
January 20, 2021 6:56 PM Esther Bower
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SPOKANE, Wash. Wooden City has been relying on takeout and delivery since November; with sales down 90%, they’re just trying to figure out how they’ll stay afloat.
“How do we mitigate some of the losses? You know, the whole game right now is just working to lose less money,” said Jon Green, co-owner and chef at Wooden City.
The restaurant opened in August 2020. While they were welcomed by the community, Green says they couldn’t create much of a following before Washington’s second restaurant shutdown in November. It’s been especially tough for Wooden City because they didn’t qualify for a lot of the additional assistance other businesses received, including PPP assistance and local grants. While they didn’t qualify for extra aid, they’ve experienced the same struggles.
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SPOKANE, Wash. Spokane restaurants and the Washington Hospitality Association are pushing for Governor Inslee to bump up restaurant capacity to 50-percent, saying take-out options simply aren’t enough.
Restaurant owners have decried Inslee’s reopening plan as a “roadmap to restaurant closures on a massive scale.”
Already, spots from Garageland to Geno’s, Wandering Table to Prospectors Bar & Grill, Rocky Rococo to Tomato Street have closed in the wake of financial devastation coming from what now approaches a full year of closures during the pandemic.
“25-percent capacity will guarantee 100-percent failure,” said David’s Pizza owner, Mark Starr.
Business groups press Washington Legislature for tax cuts, other COVID-19 relief By Paul Roberts, The Seattle Times
Published: January 17, 2021, 1:23pm
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After surviving 10 months of shutdowns, heavy layoffs, steep losses and chronic uncertainty, many businesses in Washington say they won’t see the end of the pandemic without significant help from state lawmakers.
But one week into the 2021 legislative session, prospects for that relief are anything but clear.
The good news: There’s strong bipartisan support in the Democrat-controlled state House and Senate for quick action on measures such as emergency grants for small business and more than $2.6 billion in cuts for unemployment taxes and other business costs.
Kristine Sherred: Looks like we can eat inside some restaurants again if they take these COVID-19 steps
News Tribune, Tacoma, Wash. 1/17/2021 Kristine Sherred, The News Tribune (Tacoma, Wash.)
Jan. 17 In a small victory for the hospitality industry, if restaurants can replicate outdoor airflow through open windows and doors, they can welcome guests back inside at limited capacity, according to new rules issued by the Washington state governor s office recently.
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The official guidance document refrains from calling this new setup indoor dining but rather refers to it as open air dining and says any business that chooses one of four outlined options will be considered to be operating outdoors.