Restaurant chews on ways to survive, make it through summer

A longtime industry leader learns that sometimes not doing something — say takeout in the pandemic — can be a long-term benefit.

By Brian Hartz
| 6:00 a.m. May 22, 2020
| 0 Free Articles Remaining!

Courtesy. Staff members are back at work at Mattison's Riverwalk Grille in Bradenton.

Travel-Tourism

The COVID-19 shutdown nearly put Mattison’s Restaurants and Catering out of business. Faced with that reality, and a road filled with challenges ahead, owner Paul Mattison will do what it takes for the Sarasota-based restaurant group — which includes Mattison’s Forty-One downtown and Mattison’s City Grille, and Mattison’s Riverwalk Grille in downtown Bradenton — to survive.

“It was a great season,” Mattison says of the pre-pandemic business environment. “We were really rolling along well. We had a lot of things going, and then everything came to a screeching halt — all of our catering, everything completely dried up all the time. It was terrible.”