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Kansas City restaurant scene adapts amid uncertain future

Most of layoffs in KS, MO from restaurant industry
Posted at 5:17 PM, Apr 10, 2020
and last updated 2020-04-10 18:58:45-04

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The coronavirus outbreak has put the Kansas City restaurant industry in unfamiliar territory, as businesses try to figure out how to stay afloat.

Adaptability is the key for restaurants as they adjust doing business during the outbreak. Among restaurants, there have been massive layoffs, while others have closed for good.

"This is completely unique, totally different from anything we’ve ever experienced before," said Bill Teel, executive director of the Greater Kansas City Restaurant Association.

Revenues are down for restaurants, especially for those that rely on the dine-in experience.

"It’s difficult when, if you were mostly a dine-in restaurant and 80-85% of your business was dine-in, you might switch to carryout but you can’t do enough business to cover what you were doing before," Teel said.

Each restaurant is handling the changes differently.

At M & M Bakery and Deli in Kansas City, the orders keep coming in, but customers now have to call ahead and pick-up their orders from a new slide window.

"We learned to adapt to what needs to be done in order to still serve the community," owner Pat Williams said.

Ever since the outbreak, Williams has seen the difference in money coming in.

"Big difference in revenue that used to come through here," Williams said.

While M & M Bakery has kept its entire staff, other restaurants haven't.

"We’ve been able to keep a good chunk; unfortunately, we haven’t been able to keep everybody," said Justin Hernandez, general manager and owner of Jalapenos.

The restaurant retained 60% of its staff, and many have adjusted to filling call-in orders.

"A lot of our serving staff we’ve been able to retain to coordinate them into taking carryout orders," Hernandez said.

It's an industry wading through unknown waters.

"I don’t think anybody knows how we come out of this," Teel said. "I do think we will see some permanent impact on everyone and everyone’s business."

In both Kansas and Missouri, the service industry is the most impacted in the number of unemployment claims. They are jobs that restaurant owners believe will come back once customers are allowed to dine in again.

"Ensuring them that when things do come back, that is the plan to get everybody back on and working," Hernandez said.

Many hope this is a short-term adjustment and want to see the dining rooms filled again soon.

"It’s unfortunate and it’s disheartening," Teel said. "We’ll come back from this, we’ll make it through, and I think we’ll be back to normal one of these days."

"It’s been hard, but being in business as long as we have, we’ve prepared for those hard, rainy days," Williams added.

Many restaurants are also relying on the federal government to help out, applying for small business loans to help them through this difficult time.