Maryland State Wire

The Maryland Restaurant Association has requested that businesses should be allowed to open with fewer restrictions.

The association estimated that 40 percent of all the state’s restaurants have been permanently shuttered since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

They are also asking that jurisdictions across the state be on the same page for the remaining restaurants to survive, WUSA9 reported.

Dining indoors at 50 percent capacity is approved on the state level, but Montgomery County is the only jurisdiction that doesn’t allow indoor dining at all.

“We are on an island surrounded by everybody that’s open – everybody that has a fair chance,” Sarah Gonzalez, general manager at Grill Marx in Olney said. “We’ve actually been losing money every week since we shut down indoor dining.”

The Montgomery County council will be deciding Tuesday whether or not to lift the indoor dining ban.

“All of the metrics that they claim to be looking at in making these decisions continue to decline,” Marshall Weston, president of the Maryland Restaurant Association told WUSA9. “Other jurisdictions have continued to reopen all around them. Yet they still say that it’s not good enough. We strongly disagree and we need to get these employees back to work.”