Our thoughts were that more independently owned locations may actually do better than the larger ones. I am in the middle - we are a small chain with a head office that oversees us and many other restaurants. But, we have a ton of ability to do things they way the chef and I decide. Ideally we, and smaller locations, will be able to pivot and respond quicker to the new style of demands that consumers/local laws will have. The thought is that the larger organizations wont want to take the monetary risk and pivot too early. So they will be late to meet consumer demands.

Places with more independent management will be able to (ideally) switch direction within almost 24 hours as the top level of management is literally in the restaurant and can see how everything unfolds directly on the floor. But, this is at the cost of having (assuming) tighter margins and less capital to work with. So there is a trade off.

The group I meet with is Canadian so PPP and EIDL is not available for us in the same capacity so it is not a factor we are working with.

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A thought was passed around to essentially game the expected 50% capacity (assumed) rule is to put more tables in the restaurant. Pull the extra ones out of storage, but dont seat them. It is a really simple, potential solution, but going from 60 to 80 tables will give us the ability to seat 40 instead of 30 if we seat every second table. Only issue is it will appear a little more cramped obviously.