Editorial: Sit-down could serve Wolf solutions for restaurants
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Gov. Tom Wolf needs to make a reservation for dinner.
He needs to sit down at a nice big table and have a conversation with the people who own and run and work in Pennsylvania restaurants.
Earlier in the week, members of the newly created Southwestern Pennsylvania Restaurant and Tavern Association were ready to go to war with the governor over the hot-and-cold, open-and-closed vacillating on their businesses amid coronavirus pandemic response. On Thursday, they reversed course and said what they want is a face-to-face meeting.
That’s exactly what needs to happen.
According to the National Restaurant Association, there are 26,548 businesses in Pennsylvania that serve food and pour drinks. Well, there were in 2018. It’s hard to say how many are left six months into fluctuating lockdowns.
When everything happens normally in the state, those bars and restaurants are a $24 billion industry. They represent more than 500,000 jobs.
Those statistics are certainly something Wolf knows. The governor’s moves have shown an appreciation for the numbers.
What he needs to hear is how the moves he has made to counter the pandemic have hit the people. More importantly, he needs to hear it from those people.
Too often, problems are approached by politicians in two dimensions. The obvious — in this case, covid-19 and its wildfire spread — and the political, like the way it complicates the business of Harrisburg or Washington.
But two dimensions are flat. The third dimension — the one that makes something tangible — is how it affects the people on the ground.
A sitdown with the restaurant people would show not just that Wolf cares about that impact, but that he is open to talking about solutions with the people who would be implementing them.
Telling restaurant owners that they have to keep indoor dining rooms at 25% capacity is unhelpful and creates resistance from business owners that depend on turning tables at 100% capacity to meet the slim margins that keep the doors open.
Asking the owners and operators and servers to explain the ins and outs would allow not just the finding of solutions that don’t seem like dictates, but anticipation of the complications that would come from each move.
And this is the kind of thing that should be happening with more than just food and drink purveyors and more than just in Pittsburgh.
The governor and other leaders should be having extended conversations and brainstorming sessions with educators, manufacturers and others impacted. Talk to the people, and you hear the real problems — and how the responses will or won’t work.
So pull up a chair, governor. Order the special, and listen.