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Las Cruces area businesses have struggled over the past year to adjust to different COVID 19 restrictions in the state of New Mexico. The restaurant industry has taken some of the hardest hits with various opening guidelines. La Posta owner Tom Hutchinson describes the challenges that his restaurant has faced.
“We have seen my industry impacted in ways that perhaps other industries haven’t been in terms of different levels of being open. Sales have been tremendously impacted, but more importantly it's been a tremendous hardship on my staff. We started COVID with about 175 employees, and now we are down to 100 now,” said Hutchinson.
Current New Mexico guidelines divide counties into four color tiers consisting of Red, Yellow, Green, and Turquoise. Each color level provides significant differences in capacity restrictions for restaurants.
Restaurants and businesses are given minimal notice to adjust when their county shifts tiers, says Hutchinson.
“We’re given zero notice. We find out when the public finds out. You don’t flip restaurants with a switch on and off, it takes us a while to ramp up in terms of employment and inventory. We really saw that in the last two weeks when we slid backwards,” said Hutchinson.
Local business and restaurant owner Marci Dickerson also believes that the restaurant industry needs more notice to make these adjustments.
“I believe we deserve more of a heads-up. We deserve more time in switching, especially in the restaurant industry. We have to order more food, we have to order alcohol, and we have to schedule staff. The two week “yo-yo” schedule really does cause a huge amount of hardships for restaurants and people in the hospitality industry,” said Dickerson.
With uncertainties over what color the county will shift to next, Dickerson states that restaurants always have to expect the unexpected.
“The hardest part about the whole thing is not being able to know what’s coming in the future, because you really are at the whims of people’s interpretation of the numbers. There’s a lot of people’s livelihoods hanging in the balance of these numbers and the decisions being made by the governor,” said Dickerson.
The entertainment industry has also been hit hard by state COVID restrictions. Movie theatres and other large entertainment venues have remained closed for the past year. Allen Theatres company president Russell Allen describes how this has affected Allen Theatres establishments across the state.
“We have been closed for 50 ½ weeks. For lack of a better word, it's been absolutely devastating and unreal. We have been open every day for 112 years, and now all of a sudden, we’re shut down for a year plus several months before it's all done,” said Allen.
Allen believes that Allen Theatres is equipped and prepared for a safe opening across New Mexico.
“We have full control over when the showtimes start and when they finish, so we know exactly when you’re going to show up and when you’re going to leave. We have equipment to completely sanitize every single surface in every single auditorium after every showing. In the past, we’ve purposely kept our crowds down so we don’t have to worry about lines. This will automatically translate over to our COVID policies,” said Allen.
Allen Theatres will be allowed to reopen when counties hit the Turquoise tier. Allen believes that this will not happen anytime soon for Dona Ana County.
“We won’t open our theatres until there is Turquoise, giving us a fallback to Green. Dona Ana County, and Bernalillo County for that matter, because of our population, we will never see Green. We should be able to get other theatres open around the state. But in Las Cruces, under the current guidelines, we will never see Green,” said Allen.
Business owners are hopeful that there will be more flexibility with the COVID restrictions, says Hutchinson.
“We’re hoping that the governor will create some adjustments to give us more certainty. Sliding backwards is not a fun thing to do. Perhaps if they’ve given us a longer period of adjustment to make that 5% positivity rate, it would deflect all of the disruption and chaos associated with closing a business down or at least changing the capacity levels,” said Hutchinson.
New Mexico counties will continue to be evaluated on a bi-weekly basis to determine their tier color status.