Air quality improves and businesses hope to gain more customers

Coronavirus restrictions forced restaurants to offer outdoor dining only and faced addtional challenges as wildfires polluted the air.

Coronavirus - restrictions forcing restaurants to offer outdoor dining only -- a major challenge as wildfires polluted the air.

Action news now reporter dani masten is live in chico -- dani restaurants recovering now that the smoke has cleared?

Not yet hayley but the beatniks owner and employees hope the weather holds through the weekend.

Pkg script sot/mike cress/owner of beatniks "when it was covid only, we were doing okay.

We have a large patio area, we had seating outside, so we almost had normal seating capacity, all outside.

When the fires started, the smoke got bad.

That combined with the heat, there was no way anyone wanted to sit outside."

Beatniks owner mike cress says the coronavirus and the smoke served up a double dose of bad news.

Sot/mike cress/owner of beatniks "the smoke and covid combination was really tough.

It probably cost us 60 to 70 percent of our business during that week or two."

Stand up but things are looking up for cress and his resturant as we see an improvement in air quality sot/mike cress/owner of beatniks "hopefully people will go out and enjoy the park and after their run in the park or bike ride in the park, they will come over here and have coffee, breakfast or whatever it might be and hopefully this is just the case for town itself because everyone we are talking to today just kinda seems to be in this funk of when is it going to be over, when can i get back to some sort of normalcy in my life."

Sot/elizabeth ynwion/server at beatniks "weekends have been back and forth with being busy and not busy.

I think now that the smoke is cleared hopefully, it will be a busier weekend for us."

One worker tells action news now the bad air quality made serving customers a challenge.

"it did affect us to an extent and a lot of customers here have been affected by the fires so that can put a damper on people's moods here."

Pkg script sot/mike cress/owner of beatniks "when it was covid only, we were doing okay.

We have a large patio area, we had seating outside, so we almost had normal seating capacity, all outside.

When the fires started, the smoke got bad.

That combined with the heat, there was no way anyone wanted to sit outside."

Beatniks owner mike cress says the coronavirus and the smoke served up a double dose of bad news.

Sot/mike cress/owner of beatniks "the smoke and covid combination was really tough.

It probably cost us 60 to 70 percent of our business during that week or two."

Stand up but things are looking up for cress and his resturant as we see an improvement in air quality sot/mike cress/owner of beatniks "hopefully peoplruitsen thn a lot of customers here have been affected by the fires so that can put a damper on people's moods here."

Cress tells me customers at beatniks started a fund called chico cares fund where people who have been displaced due to the fires or first responders can come and get a free meal at beatniks.

In chico - i'm dani masten, action news now coverage you can count on beatniks is currently open for outdoor dining monday through sunday from 6am-2pm.###