Reopening plans unclear for some Fort Wayne restaurants

Hoosier restaurants and bars with food will be allowed to welcome back 50% of their customers to their dining room on May 11.

As governor holcomb outlined, restaurants will soon be allowed to welcome back 50 percent of their customers but what do local restaurants think of the decision?

Fox 55's caleb saylor is live and spoke with three restaurant owners todaycaleb... how are they handling the governors plan??

The three restaurant owners i spoke with today say their either thinking about or already have plans to bring customers back into their dining rooms, but those plans are going to look different from restaurant to restaurant.

During the stay at home order, hoosier restaurants were hit hard.for bravas owner bo gonzalez, that meant cuts to his small staff "we had to make some layoffs.

I mean, everybody hours got cut."it was even worse for nicky nolot, the general manager of tolon "we had to lay off our entire staff."around the corner at jimmy todoran's coney island, he lost more than half his business switching to carry out only.

"typically we serve more inside business."so when governor holcomb announced today he was going to let 50% of people dine in at restaurants starting may 11th, nolot and todoran were happy "we're glad that we will be able to open up for even 50% capacity come may 11th.

We're looking forward for when july 4th hits "that's pretty much what i expected.

I think he's done a nice job of cautiously opening us back up.

I think he's done a nice job of leading us."but for gonzalez, he wasn't so sure it was the right call "i would have liked to have seen a solid, consistent days of cases going down before we reopened."regardless, restaurants are coming up with plans to open up and social distancefor bravas, they already do a lot of carry out, but they won't be open to dine in customers by may 11th "we would have to make some more pretty big changes to get ready to open up by may 11th.

Even those changes aside, we were looking more towards june."for a restaurant like tolon, who rely heavily on dine in customers, they're plan is straight forward.

"our plan is to seat every other table to keep that social distance during that 50% capacity time frame."at coney island, they've got to figure out what to do with their tight space "it's going to be a challenge for us and a number of different restaurants around, but we're up for the challenge.

We're going to do the best we can to be the safest and give the best product we can."

Now if you plan on dining in once restrictions are lifted, it's encouraged to call ahead and book a reservation if necessary and i should add as well that all three owners are very thankful of the support the community has given them during this time.reporting live in fort wayne, caleb saylor,