On Friday, Premier Peter Gutwein announced hospitality businesses would be allowed to have up to 10 customers dining in at a time from May 18.

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The staged lifting of restrictions was expected to give hospitality businesses an opportunity to recoup losses incurred during the lockdown, but many are choosing not to reopen.

Mud Bar owner and director Don Cameron said their income had been decimated in March when closures were announced.

But he said opening the business for 10 customers at a time would only serve to force them further into debt.

"For us it [would be] economical suicide," he said.

"You have got to pay the costs and you can't earn enough money to cover the costs."

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He said it was pleasing to see the government being positive and moving forward but that it was likely they would need to wait until July 13 to reopen, when more people are allowed inside the premises and when bars, clubs and casinos can reopen.

"We need to open so that we can open with some sort of normality, so that our customers can do what they normally do," Mr Cameron said.

"I think we really need to have weekend business, we need to have planes operating, we need to have interstate travel at the very least before we can afford to open."

Sporties Hotel owner Nick Daking echoed Mr Cameron's sentiments.

The pub has been offering a takeaway menu and has converted their dining area into a bottle shop to cope with the COVID-19 downturn.

"There is no possibility of us looking at changing our current business model yet," Mr Daking said.

"The main reason is our business model is providing social hospitality and it's extremely hard to provide that when you have extreme social restrictions."

He said he completely understood why the restrictions were there and respected the way the government was planning to roll out their plan.

But said it didn't make sense to reopen the dining side of their business right now.

"I think the minute that I have to prioritise one customer over another ... that is the minute we no longer become a pub," Mr Daking said.

Not everyone has completely written off attempting to work with the restrictions.

The Commercial Hotel owner Garry Laskey said they would try to make something work, but he wasn't optimistic.

He shared Mr Cameron and Mr Dakings' concern about the viability of operating while only being allowed to seat 10 customers.

"The problem we have got with only 10 seated clients in the venue is that we have heat pumps to run, we have deep fryers, gas cookers all that sort of stuff that needs to be run and we can only serve 10 people at a time," Mr Laskey said.

"I will be surprised if it is viable at all.

"It will pretty much be hoping we can do a little bit to cover some of our costs."

Tasmanian Hospitality Association chief executive Steve Old said easing of restrictions was good news for smaller operators like cafes, but larger businesses will still struggle.

"I think it is great that we have a timeline and something to work to for the industry, it is great that some of our little cafes and restaurants can get back open," he said.

"Although it is good news for some venues there are still a lot of venues that are not going to be able to open."

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