DENVER — While some Denver restaurateurs have gone to great lengths to keep a single eatery open through coronavirus and others have had to juggle the fate of multiple locations in the area, Richard Sandoval has faced different obstacles overseeing sites on four continents.
The Denver-based celebrity chef is dealing with different regulations from Snowmass to Serbia and from Denver to Abu Dhabi, as well as with a pandemic that is affecting far-flung parts of the globe in a variety of ways. Still, he is using similar methods to offset revenue declines he is seeing everywhere, and he has realized in recent months that some of the changes he’s put into place to try to float his worldwide empire through this crisis will manifest themselves as permanent moves.
Only about 15 of Sandoval’s 60 restaurants are fully operational right now, with locations still closed in cities where indoor dining is banned and many hotel-based eateries on temporary hiatus while global travel remains stuck on neutral and rooms go unrented. While he expects just about all of the 45 restaurants he licenses around the world to come back online, he likely will close eight of the 15 he owns himself, particularly those in business districts or with only a year or two left on leases, which doesn’t give him enough time to return to normal business.
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