(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — The restaurant business is expected to really start heating up with the upcoming Memorial Day weekend, the head of a statewide industry group said.
"I think we’re going to see the Roarin’ 20s," Sam Toia, president of the Illinois Restaurant Association, said Tuesday.
People have begun emerging in great numbers from their pandemic cocoons, he said, and restaurants will play a big part of that.
Expanded outdoor dining is probably here to stay, Toia said.
"Folks now have their head around more al fresco dining, more like they’ve had in Europe for years,” he said. “You have this European feeling."
Toia expects even more good things as the state prepares to move into Phase 5 of the Illinois COVID mitigation plan. That is when everything is fully reopen.
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