Local family-owned restaurants hard hit by coronavirus and social-distancing

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Family-owned restaurants are being hard hit by repercussions of the coronavirus. Government restrictions to control the spread of the virus have stopped in-house dining at restaurants, limiting customers to to-go and delivery orders only.

The Corporation Food Hall in downtown Los Angeles is normally crowded with customers at lunchtime, but today it was empty. Some of the food hall's restaurants decided to close. Others were open for business, hoping for walk-in customers and food delivery orders.

Alan Silva works at the Civilizations Coffee Bar. He said, "I feel like a lot of businesses aren't going to be able to come out from this. So it's important to support small businesses."

Across the hall at the Burger Shop, Martin Zamora said, "Small businesses are the backbone of this economy. You start from here and everything goes up. We need to buy groceries from the big stores, in turn everybody has a job. It's all a chain."

Gareth Jie works at Tea Maru. He said, "It definitely hurts, but I just hope things can get better. I hope that people still can come here, but if not just delivery."

As the coronavirus pandemic stretches from days to weeks, small business owners and their employees fear their businesses may have to shut down.