A large pile of snow sits on the corner of Cora and Clinton streets in Ridgway, where Colorado Boy customers spent the summer eating pizza, drinking beer and taking advantage of the weather.

Outdoor seating, on patios and sidewalks-turned-dining rooms, kept many restaurants going through the summer despite their indoor capacity limits, with high demand from crowds of tourists looking for places to eat.

But bitter cold weather took away many of those options, and the lower volume typical of the off...