Ohio restaurants bounce back from omicron wave

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — After hitting its peak in early January, COVID cases by omicron have been trending down — leading restaurant sales and demand for indoor dining to go up.

“I’m still hearing people come out and be like, this is my first time out since COVID,” Genevieve Johnson, bar manager at Rooh Columbus, said.

At Rooh Columbus, a fine dining Indian restaurant in the Short North, they’ve noticed their customer base soar to new heights since cases went down.

While over in the Victorian Village, Zeno’s restaurant said they’ve been getting by thanks to their newer and older patrons.

“We do get all our regulars, but we’re great, a well-known neighborhood bar, and we are still getting new people every week, and it’s nice to see,” Zeno’s co-owner Mitch Allen said.

The sudden recovery has even led to a response by John Barker, president and CEO of the Ohio Restaurant Association.

“With Omicron numbers dropping, we are cautiously optimistic restaurants may see a continued increase in consumer traffic,” Barker said.

But, there are still concerns over the rising cost of food and labor.

“Restaurants cannot survive with these increased costs if sales were either normalized or down,” Cameron Mitchell, owner and CEO of Cameron Mitchell Restaurants, said.

In an interview with CNBC earlier this week, Mitchell says the cost of goods are the highest he’s ever seen, at more than 11%.

However, he adds that they’re in a far better place, than during the early days of the pandemic.
“We’re certainly well better off, then we were last September, October for example, or July, August,” said Mitchell.

The Ohio Restaurant Association is also calling on Congress to replenish the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, to support the more than 6,000 eligible restaurants who did not receive federal relief funds.