Preview: Restaurants Rattled by Second-Round Shutdown

Aron Celnick was relieved to see a “nice uptick” in revenue at his Canoga Park eatery Grandi Italiani last month after L.A. County regulators allowed restaurants to resume dine-in operations with limited capacity. But the recovery didn’t last long. On July 1, just weeks after authorizing indoor dining rooms to reopen, Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed another round of temporary restrictions for restaurants and other food service businesses in 19 counties, including Los Angeles and Ventura counties, in an attempt to combat a surge of COVID-19 cases. As a result, dining rooms in Los Angeles and Ventura counties were required to shut down. Celnick said bouncing between open and closed is wasting money, labor and time for restaurants that typically gain most of their income from dine-in customers. “Business started to improve,” he said. “I hired back a couple of employees who were working for us before. And then the governor slams the door in our face again. … Business just dropped like off a cliff.” Read the full story in the July 20 issue of the San Fernando Valley Business Journal.