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Restaurant owner says increasing capacity won’t help much due to space limitations

Restaurant owners say the math doesn’t add up: they’re allowed to increase capacity to 50%, but there’s no change when you factor in the social distancing rules and no bar seating.

“It actually isn’t going to help that much,” said Richard Cagley.

>>>RELATED: Bars, restaurants now allowed to increase indoor dining

Cagley has owned Zoup in Fox Chapel for three years. He said instead of increasing restaurant capacity, it would help his business if more people were working in the offices at RIDC Industrial Park instead of at home.

“We don’t anticipate any more customers being able to be seated. We don’t anticipate sales necessarily to go up, and therefore we don’t anticipate being able to bring anybody back,” Cagley said.

“Our businesses just aren’t built to operate in this way. You know your rent and your mortgages are based on your square footage and not how many people you can fit in there,” Robert Miller said.

Miller owns the Fireside Public House in East Liberty and two other places in Millvale and Sewickley. He said about a third of the space in two of his restaurants is bar seating.

“If bar seating isn’t allowed for whatever reason, even though we can distance people out, there’s no possible way for us to get to 50% occupancy when we’re spacing out all the rest of the tables," Miller said.

His message to Gov. Tom Wolf?

“Trust your constituents. We’ve been in this for six months now,” Miller said.