With the current “pause” in dine-in service from New Buffalo to Escanaba and everywhere in between currently slated to expire at midnight on Tuesday, December 8th, the Michigan Restaurant and Lodging Association is working overtime to assure that it does, in fact, end at that time and not get extended by authorities at the Michigan Department of Health & Human Services any longer.
The trade association that advocates on behalf of the hospitality industry in Lansing and beyond has established a separate website online called Save Michigan Restaurants at which members of the industry are posting personal messages pleading with authorities to allow service to resume at a critical juncture in the life of all of them.
Journeyman Distillery Founder and Owner Bill Welter was among the first to share his video appeal to the site, explaining that being literally on the border with Indiana is a killer proposition as people simply venture over the state line to enjoy full and open dining opportunities, or find new employment in the industry. Click the video link from the MRLA’s Twitter account at the link below to see Welter’s message.
Welter has been joined by three dozen other restaurateurs, chefs, resort officials and other industry people who plead their cases for re-opening the hospitality industry this week to keep businesses from closing permanently.
At the Save Michigan Restaurants site, the association makes their case:
The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated Michigan’s hospitality industry. Our hotels and resorts have felt the sting of reduced demand over a sustained period and strict regulations on meeting and convention business.
Our restaurants have experienced unprecedented restrictions on their ability to operate, most notably 85 consecutive days of closed dining rooms earlier this year and reduced capacity ever since. Now, a three-week – and quite possibly much longer – ban on indoor dining is making it exceptionally more difficult for the industry to recover.
If the hospitality industry is to survive the winter, we must be allowed to resume our operations, most immediately through the restoration of indoor dining on December 9. Our elected leaders and relevant regulators need to hear this message.
We are asking you to take 60 seconds to share the impact of the MDHHS Order on you, your business and everyone that relies on your business.
Those in the industry who would like to add their voice to the appeal can click on the image below to be taken to the new website.
Restaurant and bar owners, resort operators, hoteliers, and others in the industry are being invited to share their story on the site, and they are in turn Tweeting many of them as they arrive in the queue to continue the steady drumbeat in support of restaurants all across the country. To see Bill Welter’s message from Journeyman Distillery and his Staymaker Restaurant and event venue, click the video link below:
"We're on the border of Indiana and they're open. People are going down there to work and we're 2 miles from the border."
⁰If the hospitality industry is to survive, we must be allowed to resume our operations, on Dec. 9. ⁰⁰#SaveMIRestaurants pic.twitter.com/f6iPvvb5Mq— MI Restaurant & Lodging Assoc. (@TheOfficialMRLA) December 4, 2020
