California restaurateur vows to fight for his restaurants, employees as state bans outdoor dining

A California restaurateur, whose business is still reeling from the virus-related shutdowns earlier this year, refuses to close up the dine-in service at one of his restaurants despite local government orders to do so.

Dave Foldes, the co-founder and owner of five Cronies Sports Grill locations in Southern California, isn't just thinking about himself and the financial toll he faces. He's also thinking about all the people he employs -- especially as Christmas nears.

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"If we don't fight now it's going to be so much more difficult to battle this in the future," Foldes told FOX Business. "You think this is tough now? It's going to be harder later."

Four out of five of his restaurants, all of which are located in Ventura County, have shifted to take-out only in order to abide by the regional three-week shutdown implemented by Gov. Gavin Newsom as a result of the rising coronavirus case rates and hospitalizations.

Now, his once-top performing locations are taking a hit. Prior to the shutdowns, each of his restaurants in Ventura County would earn $5,000 to $6,000 in profits on any given Monday. On Dec. 7, after nixing his outdoor seating area, which he doled out thousands of dollars for, each location was only seeing upward of about $1,000.

For his "newest location and slowest location" in Agoura Hills within Los Angeles County, he feared the shutdown would be detrimental.

Even with outdoor dining, Foldes says the location was losing $5,000 to $10,000 a month in profits. They were "just barely getting by anyways," he said.

Despite the threat of daily fines, Foldes refused to comply with Los Angeles County's order, which temporarily suspended all in-person dining at restaurants, bars, breweries and wineries on Nov. 25.

Although a judge temporarily blocked the county's order Tuesday, there is still an overriding regional stay-at-home order that limits restaurants and bars to take out and delivery only.

Even still, he plans to keep the outdoor seating up and running for as long as he can.

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Fortunately, he says he has a community of support behind him.

"We're busier than ever," he said. "People are supporting us and want to help us and help our servers and our cooks."

Earlier this year, when the pandemic struck, Foldes says he knew it was necessary to close.

"We were understanding about that. We didn't know much about the virus. And we also knew that there was PPP [Paycheck Protection Program] money coming to help us out," he said. "So there was light at the end of the tunnel."

The Paycheck Protection Program was part of the multi-trillion dollar coronavirus aid package passed by Congress in March to infuse small businesses with cash in order to help them retain their workforce.

Thanks to the government relief, Foldes was confident that he wasn't going to go out of business and that the business would survive.

However, the loans ceased in August.

"But this time around, it's totally unfair," he said.

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Foldes argued that officials "unfairly" blamed the industry for leading to an uptick in cases with a lack of scientific evidence.

He pointed to how officials in Los Angeles County implemented a three-week dine-in service ban right before Thanksgiving based on a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study targeting 11 different outpatient health care facilities in 10 states, instead of local data. The study found that those patients with COVID-19 were twice as likely to have dined out at a restaurant.

Instead of completely shuttering dine-in service, Foldes says officials should have first implemented sticker limits on safety protocols, such as moving tables further apart.

Instead, they are "doing something that wipes out an entire industry."

However, Los Angeles County public health director Barbara Ferrer, said that a lack of masks at restaurants makes the data on rising cases “crystal clear at every single every single level that you look at it.”

“I don’t think there’s any debate that, where people are in close proximity with other people not in their household, not wearing a mask and mingling for extended periods of time talking, singing, sharing — there’s an increased risk of transmission,” Ferrer said Monday, according to KTLA.

Meanwhile, a judge on Tuesday stated that Los Angeles County officials "acted arbitrarily" and "failed to perform the required risk-benefit analysis" when it banned outdoor dining, according to FOX11.

However, until the regional order is no longer in effect, "outdoor restaurant dining in the county cannot reopen at this time," the judge said in a tentative ruling.

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Still, Foldes said regardless of whether a restaurant is abiding by the order or not, they all need support, especially the "smaller, less established guys." 

"Go to your local restaurants, the mom and pops, and take care of the servers in the kitchen," he said. "Tip them well, if you can, because this is the time if you're able to this is the time of the year that it matters most."

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