CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- A popular Cajun-style restaurant in the south suburbs is ready to reopen when Governor Pritzker gives the okay after choosing a different way to deal with the pandemic.
After bouncing back from a fire that destroyed its Blue Island location in August 2018, the Maple Tree Inn opened at its new location in Homewood in early February of last year, just weeks before the pandemic shut it down until outdoor dining was allowed.
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That’s when co-owner Erich Wennberg said he got all his longtime employees together for, what would be, regular meetings on their collective futures.
"Our staff meetings are a little bit different, because our staff has been with us for so long. It's more like a family meeting than a staff meeting and we said, 'Listen, we don't know what's coming. Save all your money. All of it,'" Wennberg said.
Wennberg co-owns Maple Tree Inn with his wife, Katie. They decided in November that it would be best for the long-term future of their business if they went into "hibernation" until indoor dining was allowed again or the weather warmed and they could return to outdoor dining service.
He said their thinking process was, "Can we take out the variables of open-shut, open-shut, open outdoor-only, takeout-only? Let's remove the variables and see what the best solution is long-term for our business. So, what we chose to do is enter into hibernation."
By hibernating, Wennberg said, he’s losing $10,000 a month instead of $25,000 a month. Among those expense, he said, he and his wife are picking up health insurance premium costs for their employees.
"The best decision we could have made was, hibernate immediately, save all available resources, cut all available bills, and go dark for two to three to four months," he said.
Wennberg said going to carryout and delivery-only would not have financially helped Maple Tree Inn and he did not want to defy the ban on indoor dining, because he wanted to keep people safe.
Still, he thought there would have been more government help by now.
"Whether it was through direct bailouts, whether it was through the Restaurants Act, whether it was through some type of subsidy, something," Wennberg said.
Wennberg said he doesn't fault restaurateurs who try to get by with carryout and delivery-only or who defy the governor's order and still offer indoor dining. He does say some restaurant owners are overextending themselves and may be in financial trouble when it is time to go back to indoor dining.
The way Wennberg sees it is, "I can look myself in the mirror and say, 'We did it right. We protected our staff. We protected our customers. We did the right things. We’re in the darkest of the darkest of the darkest hour right now."
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He agreed with the Illinois Restaurant Association's call Thursday for Governor Pritzker to end his ban on indoor dining, even on a limited basis.
"It’s time that we open up indoor dining in the state of Illinois. We have a vaccine. We know how to do this safely. Restaurants know how to do this safely," Wennberg said.
"Our industry, the restaurant and hospitality industry. We are fighters. We are scrappers. We are people that know how to get things done."