Early in the pandemic, restaurants had to close their dining rooms because of local or national restrictions intended to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Those restrictions have mostly lifted — but thousands of restaurant dining rooms are still unavailable to customers.
The closures are happening at a pivotal moment, when restaurants are rethinking formats and moving towards designs that prioritize off-site dining. That means that when we finally emerge from the pandemic, dining rooms could look a lot different.
Some restaurants pointed to continuing outbreaks of COVID-19 as a reason for keeping dining rooms closed. At McDonald's US stores, "roughly 3,000 dining rooms remain closed in high-risk COVID areas as we continue to prioritize the health and safety of our customers," company CFO Kevin Ozan said during an analyst call in late October.
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