Make plans and God laughs. Announce a launch date for your new restaurant and experienced patrons shrug.

In the dining industry, opening delays are more common than corkage fees. Financing falls through, and permits and construction take forever.

Yet last year stands out for the sheer number of deferred launches.

On Jan. 1, 2025, I wrote about the year’s most-anticipated restaurant openings. Now, 365 days later, more than half of the 16 eateries I spotlighted have yet to welcome customers.

That article included restaurants from all over the state: The Fishmonger’s Daughter in Catonsville is still in progress, as are Sand & Cedar Taverna and The Bistro & Lounge, both in the Ocean City area. Four Atlas Restaurant Group concepts that were scheduled to open in 2025, including a few in Annapolis, remain in the works. City residents are still waiting on Candela, from the owners of Alma Cocina Latina, and Seppia, from the La Cuchara founders.

But the delays affecting eateries of every size stretched far beyond my list. The Barn & Lodge from Titan Hospitality, originally set to open in Hampden’s Rotunda in 2024, for instance, remains vacant. Sartori, a sister concept to Verde pizzeria, was also supposed to launch that year.

Verde owner Ed Bosco points to a plethora of issues that have caused the delays. “We designed a restaurant we couldn’t afford,” he said.

Ballooning construction costs sent him back to the drawing board to come up with a more economical design. The business also had to find ways to cover other rising costs, like high tariffs on Italian imports. There were permitting delays, too. Now, he says, his restaurant is set to open in Harbor Point in February or March. But his issues are representative of problems for restaurateurs across the board.

It’s the economy, stupid

It takes money to make money, but for many restaurant owners, cash has been harder to come by than ever.

“Some of our members have mentioned over the course of the year that money is tight and tough to come by if you’re looking to expand,” said Marshall Weston, president and CEO of the Restaurant Association of Maryland. Amid recession fears and lingering post-government shutdown jitters, “people continue to be very frugal and are watching what they spend when they choose to dine out.”

Potential lenders are taking notice.

“They see all the restaurant closures, they’re thinking to themselves ‘Do we really want to lend money to restaurants?’” said Alma Cocina Latina co-owner Mark Demshak. He and Irena Stein have had trouble securing private loans to complete the buildout for Candela, an arepa bar in Station North, after raising part of the capital through a crowdfunding platform.

The couple originally planned to launch Candela in the fall of 2023, a date that then moved to tentatively sometime in 2025. It’s currently up in the air.

Good night, good night, construction site

Anyone who’s ever renovated a bathroom knows that construction projects are rarely completed on time. For the majority of nascent restaurants I wrote about last year, building issues played the key role in pushing back opening dates.

Just ask the owners of Faidley’s Seafood. The buildout of their Catonsville restaurant, The Fishmonger’s Daughter, has faced “one setback after another,” said co-owner Damye Hahn. That’s included everything from a contractor who ordered the wrong set of windows to an abnormally chilly December that made certain tasks all but impossible. “Concrete doesn’t set if its too cold,” she said. “Painters can’t paint unless it’s over 40 degrees.”

The restaurant, originally announced in 2020, is on the docket to debut early this year.

Similar issues stalled many Atlas Restaurant Group projects in 2025, according to CEO Alex Smith. The company has multiple new concepts in the works for Annapolis, including Marmo and Armada, which were previously set to open last summer in the former Pusser’s Caribbean Grille. But Smith said that when workers began demolition on the space, they discovered structural issues with the waterfront building that took about six months to fix. Both spots should now open in the spring.

Back in Baltimore, “unforeseen construction delays” held up the launch of a new concept in the former Bar Vasquez space, Smith said. The building, now home to Atlas headquarters, is set to become Rosewater, a private supper club, this summer.

A lengthy buildout, including the installation of a new elevator, has pushed back the arrival of Seppia, a new Italian concept for the former Five and Dime Ale House in Hampden from the owners of La Cuchara.

On Maryland’s Eastern Shore, restaurateur Peter Elias said shipping and production delays have held up the arrival of Sand & Cedar in Ocean Pines, now projected to open in 2026 along with Elias’ Bistro and Lounge, a 750-seat concept in Ocean City’s former Cowboy Coast.

Got a permit for that?

In Baltimore, an online overhaul of the city’s permitting system caused major delays for local operators, as The Banner reported earlier this year. From February to May 2025, “it was tough getting anything moved at all,” said Lou Catelli, the go-to permit expediter for small-business owners in Baltimore.

But to Catelli, the chief issue holding up restaurant openings is a personal one.

“People who run restaurants don’t realize what they don’t know,” he said. They might overlook critical aspects of paperwork, leading to holdups down the line. “There’s a lot of chef/owners who are kind of hard-headed.”

Stubbornness might be a virtue in the kitchen, where it can mean every dish will be prepared to perfection.

But it can also mean dinner will take a while.