Birmingham Restaurant Week Winter Edition: What To Know

BIRMINGHAM, AL — Birmingham Restaurant Week, one of the city's most popular annual events, is back for a winter edition in hopes of boosting local restaurants in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The 18-day event begins Jan. 14.

Participating restaurants, food trucks and bars across the entire Birmingham-metro area and its surrounding neighborhoods will offer special breakfast, lunch and dinner menus at set price points from $5 to $50 per person.

The event will feature to-go and curbside pickup options as well as the traditional, but limited, dine-in options, as health precautions are still being mandated. More than 50 local restaurants are participating.

Supporting Birmingham's vibrant restaurant scene is more important now than ever. According to the Independent Restaurant Coalition, in just the second quarter of 2020, restaurants lost more than $220 billion in revenue and received less than 18 percent of those losses in relief from the Paycheck Protection Program.

Since then, one in five people who remain unemployed today are restaurant workers — more than any other industry — and one in six restaurants have had to close and leave many families unsure where they will get a paycheck for the foreseeable future.

"The PPP was a ten week solution to what has become a ten month problem," the IRC said in a release. "The situation is getting worse. The virus is surging, winter weather has made outdoor dining impossible, and restaurants are permanently closing as a result."

To view some of the restaurants involved and menu items available, click here.