Q. & A. with Sonia Riggs, CEO of the Colorado Restaurant Association: Taking a measure of today’s restaurant industry
We know we’ve lost hundreds of restaurants across the state. More pressingly, [after the CRA’s October Restaurant Impact Survey] 50% are telling us they will consider closing permanently within 6 months, no doubt because they are worried about ongoing restrictions on capacity and because they have not seen a second round of significant cash relief at the federal level. The Colorado restaurant industry was a $14.5 billion industry in 2019, but it is down billions of dollars in 2020 — we estimate it lost nearly $1 billion in April alone.