Corby Kummer: Hibernating Restaurants Stay Hopeful For Warmer Spring Months

Food writer Corby Kummer spoke to Boston Public Radio on Friday about hibernating restaurants, which will close during the winter due to COVID and try to reopen in the spring.

“There’s only one choice many restaurants have since the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) money ended, which is look at their expenses, see how much it would cost to try to stay open with extremely limited capacity, and say ‘We’re closing the doors and hoping in warmer weather we can bring back outdoor dining,’” he said.

Many Boston restauranteurs have told Kummer that they’re hoping to hang on until April, he noted. “But what I thought was ‘You really think there’s going to be a vaccine in wide use by April?’” he said. “But I think that the realistic calculus here is that once warm weather opens, there are more takeout possibilities, more outdoor dining possibilities, and restaurants can try to stay on.”

Kummer is a senior editor at The Atlantic, an award-winning food writer, and a senior lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition and Policy.