Restaurateur worries virus could kill some restaurants

Photo: CTV News

British Columbia restaurant owners are nervously watching to see what comes next in the fight against COVID-19.

One Metro Vancouver restaurateur tells CTV News Vancouver they are feeling the pinch from having to close temporarily due to COVID-19 and limits of 50 people at a time plus further measures could force some restaurants to close for good.

Emad Yacoub the owner of Glowbal Restaurant Group thinks 20 per cent of Metro Vancouver restaurants could be forced to shut down permanently.

Yacoub says weeks-long closures could spell the end for some smaller operations, as he says employers will struggle to pay employees while not earning any money.

"It got ugly very quickly," he said. "Very, very quickly. Like, almost 90 per cent drop across the board, everywhere."

Yacoub says a restaurant that would usually seat 550 diners on a Friday night is now seeing about 80.

Yacoub is calling on the government for longer-term loans so restaurants can pay their staff.

"This is what we want to hear from the government," he said.

And Yacoub acknowledges his restaurants are fairly large. He said those hardest hit will be mom-and-pop places.

"In a time when everything is firing on all cylinders, there's 20 per cent that will go under because the margin is so slim in Canada, compared to the United States."

According to Yacoub there are 191,000 people who work in the industry in B.C.

-with files from CTV News Vancouver