Acquolina on Main St. is one of the Aspen restaurants asking customers to prepay for a portion of their dinner with a deposit at the time of a reservation.
Empty chairs at empty tables won’t bode well for Aspen restaurants this winter after a challenging year of closures, tight capacity restrictions and strict COVID-19 protocols.
It doesn’t help that Aspen has something of a “cancel culture,” said Candice Olson, who owns Local Coffee House, Here House and the new Firefly at Here House restaurant. Often, Olson said, diners make reservations weeks in advance only to cancel the day of, leaving venues hustling to fill seats in time for the dinner hour.