PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — The first weekend of the latest COVID-19 restrictions is now in the books and restaurants’ books are seeing red.

While some places like pizza shops, fast food, and quick order restaurants may survive without indoor dining, for others, the empty chairs mean empty pockets at the wrong time of year.

Pat McDonnell who owns the Atria’s Restaurant chain says he was forced to cancel parties and his restaurants remained dark for the weekend.

“Takeout is one thing but people want to be together —  I mean that’s you. That’s the thing about dining out, is the experience not just the food. And so, it takes all that away and so many of our employees that have kids and, you know, like all responsibilities that we have financially. With that actually ripped away, you know their busiest time, you’re away from them. You know, it makes up a significant piece of our year, for sure.”

McDonnell says he really feels like he had no choice. “We’re not a takeout restaurant. We typically do takeout, we do a considerable amount of takeout, but it cannot sustain our business, our facility, and our employees, it just cannot sustain it. You know the first time around last March 16, we decided not to go delivery only, or takeout only, and delivery because we lose more then we are losing by just being closed. So that’s our approach, we’re just gonna be closed.”

Watch as KDKA’s John Shumway reports:

While he fully expects to reopen, he questions whether many of the restaurants now shutting down will ever cook again. “I doubt it. You know, it’s just very difficult to dig yourself out of a hole like this. And when you lose as much revenue and momentum as you do at this time here any time of year you know it’s hard to come back. And so we lose December, we lose Christmas, we lose New Year’s, we lose the whole month where again it’s our busiest time of year, with private dining the foot traffic and so forth.”

Plus, he points out customers aren’t on hand to purchase gift cards. “And we count on that to help support our January, February, March business because people are buying gift cards to be used after the first of the year. And so that helps us. And we’re losing that. I mean we’re doing less than 50% in gift card sales compared to what we did last year.’

While he understands the pandemic, McDonnell feels like the restaurant business is being singled out. “Somebody tell me what percentage, how many people are really being affected by COVID through restaurants, no one knows that. They can’t answer that. We take it serious and so for those few, and I would like to say confidently few that do not, then punish them. Don’t punish the whole industry.”

McDonnell aches for his employees who have families and children who were looking foward to the holidays.

McDonnell says “We will get through this. It’s gonna be very very difficult. However, we’ll get through.

KDKA’s John Shumway asked McDonnell: “Can you sustain your employees through this or do you have to lay them off?”

“Oh, we have to lay them off. We furlough them,” McDonnell said.

He hopes to get them all back to work as soon as the shutdown is lifted.

If it sticks with the announced dates, McDonnell plans to have his people working and the kitchens cooking on January 4.