Dine-in or takeout, NC restaurants once again are feeding the masses
After months of takeout and to-go orders early in the pandemic, followed by months of limited capacity at restaurants across North Carolina, diners have returned in force.
Restaurants statewide recorded their highest sales tax collections this summer in more than two years, according to data collected by WRAL News.
In June, restaurants paid $88.8 million in sales taxes to the state. That increased to $89.9 million in July and to $94 million in August.
The last time that much sales tax was collected by North Carolina restaurants was in April 2019, with $85.6 million. After that, collections trended downward, bottoming out at $48.4 million in May 2020, when stay-at-home orders during the initial months of the pandemic forced thousands of eateries across North Carolina to close.
"We’ve been lucky," Parker Kennedy, owner of Caffe Luna in downtown Raleigh, said Friday. "It was really tough on a lot of businesses, and some of them didn’t make it through."
In addition to the pandemic, a number of violent protests occurred downtown during the summer and fall of last year.
"We had water coming over the bow for a long time, with the civil unrest and COVID and people not having jobs. It was tough," Kennedy said.
But even with supply chain disruptions and a tough time finding workers, restaurants appear to be on the recovery path.
"They’re not as frightened as they used to be, and they’ve kind of toned down," Kennedy said of customers returning to in-person dining.
As Raleigh Restaurant Week 2021 kicked off Friday, he said the trend of increasing sales continues at his restaurant.
"I haven’t really looked at the numbers, [but] we had a fabulous month last month, and it’s the best month – last month – we’ve had since the pandemic," he said. "We’re doing well again, and we’re very happy."
