CUYAHOGA COUNTY, Ohio — Have you noticed more restaurants closing in Ohio? You're not crazy.
According to the Ohio Restaurant Hospitality Alliance, at least 500 restaurants will have shuttered this year.
The CEO and President of the Alliance, John Barker, told me the number is much lower than during COVID-19, though.
"We think about 110,000 restaurants closed across the United States during the pandemic. That was really from the summer of 2020 all the way through about 2022," Barker said. "You see some mom and pop's that maybe got opened after the pandemic when things were really booming. Now we're back to an environment where costs are really high and they're high because you had that inflation that just zoomed from 2020 up to really late last year."
Barker said food costs are up almost 40% as compared to the usual 3% annually.
Sausalito on Ninth Catering and Sales Manager, Charlotte Sigel, told me the restaurant is paying $90 per box of romaine lettuce.
"It's shocking to see how drastic the prices have gone up. It's the quality of candidates that we're trying to bring in whether it's management, servers, bartenders, dishwashers," she said. "Even when we agree to pay, you know, $20 an hour, the work ethic is just lagging substantially."
Sigel said the restaurant industry has changed so much in the last few years that the restaurant has limited its hours.
"We close at 3 o'clock on Mondays and Tuesdays. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 5 o'clock we close. Fridays, we close at seven. We're no longer open on Saturdays or Sundays," Sigel said.
Thanks to its catering hustle, the restaurant feels above water.
Sausalito on Ninth is actually expanding in 2026.
A new Indian fusion restaurant will open a new space, Tick Tock Tavern, under the same ownership as Sausalito on Ninth.
While hundreds of restaurants have closed this year, the Ohio Restaurant Hospitality Alliance said at least 700 have opened or are opening.
"Compared to, you know, the pandemic where we had over 3,000 close, right? It's back down to normal," Barker said.
Sigel told me, "It's really sad. It's really, you know, disheartening to hear. A lot of these places are privately owned, and when it is privately owned, I mean you are putting everything into it."
Saucy Brew Works Owner, Brent Zimmerman, said he's frustrated with the preliminary numbers he's seeing from the Alliance.
"We will have way less restaurants a year from now than we do right now. Is that a good thing or not? I don't know. But there's gonna be less people employed. To act like, well, the Cheesecake Factory is opening more or whatever chain that you want to mention is gonna of course. They're trying to take turf of people that have closed. That doesn't have anything to do with health. It's pretty disingenuous. I wonder why they even have economists that work on the staff of the company," Zimmerman said.
Zimmerman believes there's a lot more discussion behind closed doors regarding restaurant closures.
"Way more are going to close than that. They have no idea how to predict what is actually going to happen. People are missing rent payments and mortgage payments, etc. — that are going on as we speak that they don't know what they are," Zimmerman said.
Zimmerman also thinks more businesses will fail as the years go by because of the Cleveland Browns relocation to Brookpark.
"They don't understand what it costs to build anything. They have no idea what lease costs are. They have no idea what the business model looks like to make it profitable and what the revenue numbers need to be. It feels like Nancy Pelosi to me where she made $1,750,000 a year and somehow is worth $300 million," Zimmerman said. "None of them really actually understand the real math. It's just pretty laughable. It's a pretty abysmal environment out there."
The Alliance anticipates definitive data on 2025 restaurant closures to roll through in January.
As restaurants gear up to finish out the fourth quarter of this year, one of the busiest drinking holidays is attracting customers: Blackout Wednesday.
"How are we feeling about that?," I asked Zimmerman.
"We actually have a group coming tonight, 20-year anniversary of their high school reunion. I texted our events person today and I was like, 'This should be interesting,'" Zimmerman said. "People coming home to see each other in person I think is a really great thing and I think it's a lot of what we're missing in general in life. It's nice to see that people are making the effort to do that whether it's here or other places."
While Sausalito on Ninth is closed for the drinking holiday, Saucy Brew Works will be open and said it does pretty well financially on this day every year.
To incentivize more restaurants in Ohio, the Alliance said it offers logistical support.
"The business plan that has to go into it and what are your food costs, what are your labor costs, you know, what are you gonna pay for your equipment, you know, all that. It's not much fun, it's not glamorous, but you gotta do it right. That's the difference between making it and not making it," Barker said.
He told me the Alliance also provides a whole marketplace where, for example, incoming businesses can get their energy audited.
"You know, the amount of energy that they're gonna use and what they're gonna spend, and to get that repackaged so they can get a discount. Those kind of things — workers' comp, other types of insurance," Barker added.
Sigel said she's hopeful more businesses will either come to Ohio or remain afloat.
Her message to customers is: "I think if we're putting out the right product, if we're putting out good food, good drinks, great service, you know, friends and family environment, I think that's the most important thing."
It's not only restaurants that are suffering — breweries are, too.
RELATED: More Ohio breweries have closed than opened in 2025 so far
