NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) – Bar and restaurant owners in Davidson county are calling for equality across the state.

Wednesday around 10 downtown restaurants and bar owners met with Mayor Cooper and Butch Spyridon of the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp. to express concern over the current call to action.

The city called on bars to close and restaurants to restrict capacity Sunday in Music City.

“You can go to Williamson County and restaurants are full. It’s fake news there, here it’s real,” Tom morales of ACME Feed and Seed and The Southern Steak and Oyster told News 2.



Doors are closed and it’s hard, said Morales pointing out that he will have to furlough around 500 people come Monday.

“It’s a tragic thing. The uncertainty, the fear when you look into people’s eyes.”

Concerns for those employees and the overall impact on music city were discussed behind closed doors with downtown business owners representing around 10,000 hospitality workers that have been laid off or furloughed, according to Morales.

“There has to be a unifying communication that all of us are being treated equally. If it’s a health issue then all bars and all restaurants need to be closed. It doesn’t need to be piecemeal. We generate more tax dollars than any other 5 blocks in the state of Tennessee, so the Governor needs to get involved,” he explained.

With nearly every bar closed on lower Broadway, thousands of bartenders, servers, cooks, managers, and others are without a paycheck.



“The fire of who Nashville is and what made Nashville the it city is at stake right now and we have to be able to retain those people so when we reopen the city of Nashville we have people that can do the job,” said Morales.



He points to the Governor saying those employees need to be taken care of during this unprecedented time.



“They need to be mandating that there is a 90 day period that they don’t have to pay their mortgages, utilities. I could go on but the landlords, banks, utilities all that keeps ongoing. It’s very sad.”

The group plans to meet again Thursday afternoon.

