Restaurants staying afloat with limited capacity

Plank Town Brewing Company Owner Ben Caridio says sales are down.

But he's not worried about the state of his restaurant yet.

Start making reservations today some restaurants are open for dine-in service.

But with limited capacity seating some might be pinching pennies to survive.

Kezi 9 news reporter julian mininsoh spoke with one local restaurant about how they've been financially impacted.

(julian) plank town brewing company is open for business.

But it wasn't business as usual for its first dine-in weekend.

Sales were down about 50 percent for this past weekend.

(bart caridio) "we're about 65 to 70 percent food sales here and about 25 percent beer sales."

Caridio says he isn't worried yet because compared to others -- plank town has more space to accomodate more customers.

(bart caridio) "our sales will go down but as long as you're running a profitable operation you're still going to get three to seven percent net at the end of the year."

Caridio says he's ordering less food from his suppliers to help cut costs.

He also only has about half of his normal staff right now.

But has had no problem getting people back to work.

(caridio) "people want to come back to work.

They're missing human interaction.

While our labor costs are currently down.

We're going to try to build those back up beacause we did get the ppp loan.

So we're going to try and build those back up bu full employmen by the end of june."

Caridio says plank town can survive -- and by that time... (bart caridio) "hopefully everything returns more to normal by that time and we're able to have more customers."

(julian) coming up at 5 i talked to public house about how their first dine-in weekend went and why they may be better off compared to other restaurants.

Reporting in springfield - julian mininsohn, kezi 9 news.

The springfield public