It's been more than two weeks since Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey partially lifted restrictions on allowing restaurants to serve customers on site.
New figures from OpenTable, the dining app helping people make reservations, show dine-in seating is down 60% in Arizona from a year ago. That's a big decrease, but far better than the 87% drop-off nationwide.
Still, turning a profit under the current social distancing guidelines is difficult.
Steve Chucri with the Arizona Restaurant Association noted restaurants can only use half their tables.
"How many tables are you going to have? Eight out of 30, you know, or 20," he asked. "So the model's not there to make the money in order to bring everyone back in."
He estimated the total ban on in-house dining cost restaurants statewide $27 million daily in lost revenue, with curb-side service bringing in about 10% of what they were making before the shutdown.
