Sacramento restaurants could reopen within weeks. Here’s what has to happen first
Sacramento County restaurants could get the green light from local and state health officials to reopen their doors and start seating customers within weeks.
When it happens, it will amount to an unprecedented social and health experiment:
Will diners be willing to return amid ongoing coronavirus fears? Can restaurants succeed if they are only allowed to open half their tables? Will clients be turned off by wait staff in masks and gloves?
As coronavirus infection numbers improve, Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Friday he may be within a week of making some notable moves on reopening the economy after six weeks of a mandate that forced many businesses, including restaurants and bars, to close their doors and sent most California residents home to sit and wait.
“I don’t want to overpromise,” Newsom said during his noon news briefing. “We are getting close to making announcements ... in the hospitality sector. Yes, that means restaurants.”
Sacramento County Health Services Director Dr. Peter Beilenson earlier this week said he’s begun talking with some restaurateurs about reopening soon – but under very tight restrictions.
The goal, he said, is to come up with local guidelines that make sense and will serve to protect the public while allowing one of the area’s key assets — its cuisine — to come back to life.
That may include ordering restaurants to cut seating in half, requiring customers to submit to a temperature check at the door, and mandating sneeze guards, employee masks, and throw-away menus.
“We are talking with (gyms and) restaurateurs on potential guidelines,” Beilenson said. “Restaurants will be one of the first in loosening the order.”
The governor’s stated four-phase plan does not specifically address restaurant openings, but California Craft Brewers Association executive director Tom McCormick said people within the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development told him restaurants would start reopening under Phase 2, which could be launched or announced as early as next week.
Bars would likely come in the third phase, McCormick said. Though he deferred to health officials on the right timeline for reopening, he did question why a brewpub with its own kitchen would be inherently safer than, say, a brewery with a food truck parked outside.
“I’m not sure it makes a whole lot of sense for me why bars wouldn’t be able (to open) at same time as restaurants if they are under same restrictions with social distancing,” McCormick said. “It’s tough. Obviously the longer it goes for some of these establishments to open up, the longer it’s going to take for business to get back to normal, but it’s also a balancing act with public safety in the middle of a pandemic.”
Sacramento County’s key coronavirus touchstones — the number of new infections, deaths, and the number of virus hospital patients — are trending well, better than they are in most other urban areas of the state, Beilenson said.
That means that when the governor decides to move the state into the second phase of the reopening process, Sacramento County could be among the counties that will have more leeway to reopen restaurants than Los Angeles or other harder-hit areas.
Beilenson offered no reopening date, but said he wants Sacramento to be prepared to reopen efficiently and safely. “We know people are antsy.”
“We have to maintain social distancing to continue to bend the curve. We have done a phenomenal job. Sacramentans should be proud of themselves, but this is not time to open up yet.”
Reopening a start, but restaurant owners want more
Michael Thiemann of Jim’s Good Food, a midtown restaurant that had opened up just weeks before the virus hit, is now relegated to selling hamburgers for pick-up twice a week outside his restaurant. He says he can’t imagine reopening the restaurant as it once was, not as long as virus fears remain – and certainly not under restrictions health officials have floated recently.
It won’t work for most restaurants to open at half-capacity, with patrons having their temperature taken at the door and served by masked waiters, Thiemann said. “Plastic screens, masks, that’s not a good environment. This is hospitality. That’ll kill restaurants. Restaurants like mine are going to be history.
“You can’t operate at half-capacity. We are paying square footage for an entire restaurant.”
That sentiment of non-feasability over the long run was echoed by both Billy Zoellin, owner and executive chef of the popular Tahoe Park/East Sacramento brunch spot Bacon & Butter, and Tracey Berkner, who owns Amador County fine-dining restaurant Taste with her husband in the wine country town of Plymouth.
For all the differences between Bacon & Butter, where an order of the famously fluffy flapjacks costs $12, and Taste, where a filet mignon creeps up just south of $40, Zoellin and Berkner’s views on takeout and reopening dining rooms were notably synced.
Neither would turn away the financial bump from half-capacity dining, but both said it wouldn’t allow them to be successful in the long run. They worry about consumer confidence in the safety of restaurants while the pandemic remains ongoing, noting that many customers won’t feel comfortable having sit-down meals out of the house while continuing to hear about COVID-19 death tolls.
“There are two camps. There is a population that does not want to stay home and wants to get out and be social. A lot of customers say, ‘We’ll see you when this is all over,’” Berkner said. “But some are going to still be afraid to come out for awhile. We have to figure it out.”
“Now, the dining room is a threat,” Zoellin said. “I don’t think any of our diners are comfortable with the table next to them coughing and sneezing ... I don’t know if you will see consumer confidence until there is (more) positive news.”
Zoellin and Berkner aren’t alone in their apprehension: many restaurateurs across the country aren’t thrilled at the idea of partial occupancy. Restaurants often rely on high weekend customer traffic to compensate for slow weekdays, a business model that relies on being able to seat many parties at once. Owners in Iowa and Georgia told Eater they anticipate reopening dining rooms will cost $15,000-$25,000 in various expenses, a steep bill that needs cash flow immediately to be paid off.
Bacon & Butter was one of those that lived by the weekends. Crowds of brunch eaters waited in bunches out front on Saturday and Sunday mornings for their moment to enter an equally crowded restaurant.
That world vanished in mid-March, and Zoellin only reopened Bacon & Butter’s Broadway location for take-out on April 30, with just five of his 60 former employees back at work. The East Sacramento restaurant remains closed.
“A restaurant is people,” Zoellin said. “People are attracted to people. It is a big part of what we are.”
Amador County has had only a handful of coronavirus cases, making it a more likely candidate for early economic reopening should the governor allow less-affected counties more freedom in the early stages. Berkner is guessing she might be able to reopen Taste’s dining room in early June.
How coronavirus will change dining
The strain the pandemic has placed on restaurants may have a silver lining. Instead of relying on wine tourists treating themselves to extravagant meals, Taste has been selling more basic and less expensive dinners for pick up or delivery to customers, many of them new, who live nearby in Amador County.
That’s persuaded Berkner to remodel the restaurant and refocus the menu with lower price points. They expect to continue to do take-out or delivery service when they are allowed to reopen their dining room.
“It’s a little reset to make us more accessible, but still offer what we have built our reputation on,” she said. “Our community has embraced us and that has changed how we look at our business. I have to change and respect my community. I need to be here for my community. Tuesday and Wednesday nights, I don’t have a lot of people visiting from out of the area.”
Thiemann, formerly of Mother and of Empress Tavern, said he is taking the pandemic seriously and has come to terms with the shelter-in-place order. But that’s why the moment is so difficult. It’s hard to imagine when, how, or even if society can get back to when people enjoyed being packed into a busy restaurant.
That said, Thiemann hasn’t given up. He’s hustling and holding onto a bit of hope. Just tell him, he says, what the new normal will be: “Give me the rule book, and I will figure it out.”