COLORADO SPRINGS — Whether you decided to bundle up and stay home on this Valentine's Day, or head out to one of your favorite restaurants, restaurants in the Olympic City were prepared to meet their customer's needs.
For the first time in 18 years, Franco Pisani, owner of Paravicini's Italian Bistro, opened up his patio for customers on Valentine's Day.
"Now we have to be a little bit more creative on how we are going to get as many people and still be COVID smart," said Pisani.
However, the weather threw Pisani a bit of a curve ball when he saw it was going to be in the negative digits all weekend long.
"I bought like 300 lbs. of propane we got tanks from friends and everything," said Pisani.
Pisani says he wasn't going to allow the cold temps to stop his customers from coming in to celebrate the special day.
"We are hustling doing anything that we can do to get food for the people that want it!" said Pisani.
Paravicini's reservations were completely booked for the weekend, but Pasini says the support from those who couldn't get a table has been incredible.
"The people that are like hey I know I couldn't get it, you are booked but we still got stuff to-go," said Pisani.
Along with Paravicini's, MacKenzie's Chop House has been serving customers all day long since Friday.
"We turned away 1,000 reservations," said Mark Biondo, MacKenzie's GM.
Biondo says in years past they usually only turned away half that number.
While it's been great serving more customers out on the patio, "we can fill up the patio even when it is 50 degrees because we have heaters," this weekend was a little bit more tough because of the weather.
So, MacKenzie's decided to keep their patio closed until it gets warmer.
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