'It's still a shock': Kendall County restaurant, bar owners react to new COVID-19 restrictions

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic last spring, regulars at Suzy’s Bar & Grill, 4353 Tuma Road in Yorkville, would tip $100 for a takeout pizza and bought hundreds of dollars in gift cards to support the business. Summer’s reopening went well, and, most important, no one got sick from COVID-19, owner Jason Davis said.

Yet with Gov. JB Pritzker’s indoor dining restrictions slamming down on an already weakened industry, some in the Kendall County restaurant scene don’t know how long they can hold out.

Under the new rules, all indoor dining and bar service is suspended in Kendall County, and gatherings are limited to fewer than 25 guests or 25% of overall room capacity.

Davis said he was devastated upon hearing the announcement of the new restrictions.

“We weren’t putting people at risk with what we were doing – in my eyes,” he said.

When asked what happens if the restrictions last into the new year, Davis said, "It wouldn’t shock me. I don’t know that myself or a lot of places will make it that long.”

Pritzker’s recent executive orders have sparked a furor among Chicago-area restaurant owners. Restaurants have filed lawsuits. Officials have issued fines. Indeed, the restrictions go to the very heart of a nationwide balancing act between public health, personal freedom and economic livelihoods. But amid record COVID-19 metrics across Illinois, Pritzker and his public health team see an end to indoor dining as a necessary evil to fight the virus.

For Irma Castellanos, owner of Paradise Cove 220, 220 S. Bridge St. in Yorkville, the restrictions were both distressing and expected.

“It’s still a shock,” Castellanos said. “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Castellanos owns a sister restaurant in Florida, a state that, despite suffering one of the country’s worst summertime COVID-19 outbreaks, has since thrown out most of its pandemic restrictions.

“It’s kind of of interesting when you can have such a drastic difference in two businesses during the same pandemic,” Castellanos said.

In fact, Illinois’ economic recovery trails many other states.

Amid tightening restrictions, Illinois now consistently records the largest weekly jumps in unemployment claims in the country, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

The downturn has not spared restaurants. Forty percent of restaurants will not remain open in six months without further federal relief, according to a national industry group. And according to a "conservative" estimate recently cited by the Illinois Restaurant Association, at least 20% of the state's restaurants could go out of business during the pandemic.

In recent weeks, two suburban restaurants garnered some of the biggest headlines in the ongoing revolt against the new restrictions. A restaurant in Geneva filed lawsuits against Pritzker’s order, and three Park Ridge dining spots faced hundreds of dollars in fines for remaining open.

“It really is a matter of life or death for these businesses,” Hill said. “And it’s going to affect other industries – not just restaurants themselves. … This restriction of economic activity just has a dampening effect on the rest of the economy.”

Restaurant wars

So what is the science behind the spread of COVID-19 in restaurants?

While patrons not wearing masks can infect one another through close contact and conversation, U.S. health officials now say that the virus is airborne, meaning aerosol droplets can linger indoors even after an infected person has left.

Yet the risk of airborne transmission is disputed by scientists, and even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stated that "most infections are spread through close contact, not airborne transmission."

When justifying the restaurant shutdowns, Pritzker has pointed to CDC studies and the state’s own data on transmission of the virus. However, releasing the data is a different story.

Facing requests for indoor dining transmission data from restaurants, Republicans and the media, Pritzker instead released a snapshot of 18,000 COVID-19 cases that listed where infected individuals had been the previous two weeks. About 2,300 of those individuals had been in a bar or restaurant.

According to another CDC study cited by Pritzker, people infected with the virus were twice as likely to have been in a bar or restaurant. Yet according to that same CDC study, its researchers did not distinguish between indoor or outdoor dining, the type of restaurant or delivery method.

Although the Kendall County Health Department has never traced a big outbreak to a local restaurant, Executive Director RaeAnn Van Gundy cautioned against treating restaurants as safe places. She said in an interview that her office has found through contact tracing that infected residents have visited restaurants in the past, adding that any large gathering of people contributes to Kendall County's substantial community spread.

"What you don't want to do is give people a false sense of security when I say it's not in a restaurant – or that restaurants are safer places – because that's not so," Van Gundy said. "It's everywhere we are."

‘You don’t want to lose everything you have’

In anticipation of the Nov. 4 indoor dining restrictions, some local restaurants already had adapted.

Rowdy’s Bar & Grill, 210 S. Bridge St. in Yorkville, revamped its takeout menu and appetizer list, owner Mark Lewan said.

“Obviously, we’re not happy," Lewan said. "There’s nothing we can do. It’s out of our control. You have to listen to the powers that be to be able to survive again I guess.”

While Lewan received federal small-business relief early in the pandemic, he said that ever-changing rules and criteria in the grant system might prevent him from requesting more.

“We’re still playing with that forgiveness stuff,” Lewan said. “It scares you because no one knows for sure what’s going to happen. … I don’t want to be held by anybody, either, saying ‘Oh, you can’t do this. You can’t do that because we gave you money.'"

Upon announcing the new restrictions in Kendall County and state Health Region 2, the Pritzker administration announced it will provide more grants to struggling small businesses. To date, the state government has distributed more than $55.7 million in relief funds to Region 2, according to a news release from the governor.

In Kendall County, local Chamber of Commerce leaders said they would promote restaurants on their social media and update a list of available takeout options.

And at a Yorkville City Council meeting in late October, 3rd Ward Alderman Joel Frieders floated the idea of using $75,000 in leftover city grant money for providing relief to on-the-brink businesses such as local restaurants.

“If these restrictions keep moving their way west, I know a few restaurants that won’t last a month,” Frieders said. “We pay farmers not to plant crops. … We need to think long and hard about what we can do to make sure that those people that we love, that we support right now and their businesses, that they have our support even though we won't be able to physically congregate within their businesses.”

Yorkville Mayor John Purcell and City Administrator Bart Olson did not respond to request for comment on whether the city is considering using the funds for restaurant relief.

As for the future, Rowdy’s owner Mark Lewan said he’s relying on health guidelines just as much as his regulars to keep going.

“You don’t want to lose everything you have,” Lewan said. “But we’re willing to do everything we can to keep our employees and people coming back."