TUCSON, Ariz. -- While some restaurants are busy getting ready to reopen May 11, Borderlands Brewing Company is pumping the brakes.
In fact they are delaying their opening day until June, potentially July.
Borderlands is both a brewery and a restaurant.
Es Teran, the co-owner and CEO of Borderlands says, in a perfect world, he’d open in a heartbeat, but right now his main concern is safety.
“I just don’t think Arizona is ready right now,” he told KGUN9.
Teran says it’s better to play it safe.
“We don’t want to make things worse. So we’re not really going to open up and potentially have another outbreak,” he added.
Teran says now is the time to shift their priorities.
“Our priority is mainly safety. It’s not really about making money,” he said.
Which is why Borderlands continues providing free hand sanitizer to the community and to the El Rio Health Center.
Teran says even though staying closed until June or even July will hurt business, it’s the right thing to do.
“Let’s just say last month, we probably lost closer to 25 to 30 grand in potential revenue that we couldn’t be making, so we are losing money by not being open, but we just don’t think people are ready,” he told KGUN9.
However, Borderlands has to make money somehow--so they’ll continue to brew beer. They also have an online store.
“We’re still operational. We’re still in business. But we would like to do deliveries, we would like for people to pick up curbside. We would like for people to come and pick up their beers and go,” said Teran.
Through this all, he’s confident the community will continue to support them, by drinking one of their beers at home instead of at the brewery.
“We just want to make sure people are safe. The idea is to make sure that my workers and my customers are following protocol and they’re staying safe and keeping social distancing. The idea is to do what’s right,” Teran said.
For more information on how you can order for delivery or get free hand sanitizer from Borderlands, click here.
