Bowling Green Chamber of Commerce launches Takeout Takeover to support restaurants

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – Most local restaurants are suffering financially from the closures of their dining rooms during the pandemic.

The Bowling Green Chamber of Commerce launched a campaign to help called, Takeout Takeover.

The organization now features information on all area restaurants offering takeout according to Chamber president and chief executive officer Ron Bunch.

“Restaurants were some of our first calls. We have 70-75 restaurant partners of ours. We reached out early on to help us understand what they were seeing immediately and then we pushed that information to help them develop curbside services, takeout and other things like that knowing we’d be shut down for a period of time at least for dining-in options,” said Bunch.

While some restaurants have received leeway and government assistance, the future is blurry for many that are locally owned.

Mariah’s Restaurant president, David Pinchuk, is worried about reopening because of the uncertainty of business once the healthy-at-home orders are lifted.

“It is devastating. We are closed for the most part except for delivery and so our revenue is off 80 plus percent,” said Pinchuk.

Owner of the Bike Rack Bistro, Patrick Folker, says the community support spiked at the beginning of the shutdown, but has since gone down.

“The first couple of weeks, actually business was up, and I think that was an emotional response from the community. That has since died down. We did cut hours with our employees, and we have actually reduced the hours of operation,” said Folker.

The chamber continues to push for local businesses to support each other on their website.

Click here to learn about deals, specials and other information about the restaurants.  Around 60 different restaurants are featured.