California bars can reopen Friday. Here’s what changes they’ll have to make first

Sacramento County bars will reopen Friday. Business as usual will have to wait.

A 14-page, 107-point guide released by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office Friday outlines the steps restaurants, bars and wineries should take to safely reopen during the coronavirus pandemic. The guidance piggybacks on a slightly shorter eatery-only manifesto distributed last month when restaurants began reopening for sit-down service.

Several of the same changes restaurants made also apply to bars, including keeping employees 6 feet apart when possible, screening customers for symptoms upon arrival and asking them to use hand sanitizer. People are still only supposed to sit with others from their own household, and vigorous disinfection recommendations remain in place.

The updated guidance still recommends customers wear face coverings when not eating or drinking. Now, though, it goes further to say businesses should provide masks to customers who show up without them.

Activities such as karaoke, open mics, trivia nights, pub crawls and mixers that encourage sharing items or movement remain banned, as are drinking games and drop shots because of the risk of splashing and spilling.

Front-of-house employees are also supposed to direct people to partitioned or socially distanced tables instead of allowing them to gather at the bar. Customers who do approach the bar will be greeted with a barrier or gap keeping them 6 feet from the bartenders.

The state is also asking bars to limit customers’ alcohol consumption, knowing that judgment tends to slip the more people drink, and to keep music volume low enough that staff can hear customers’ orders while staying 6 feet away.

Winery tasting rooms get their own section of guidelines. Each pour needs to be delivered into a fresh glass that makes no contact with the bottle’s mouth. Communal dump buckets are gone, replaced by individual spit cups, and tours must be limited to one household at a time standing 6 feet from the leader.

Employees can refuse service to parties with COVID-19 symptoms, a foregone conclusion newly spelled out in the guidance. The state also now cautions business owners restarting their water systems after long-term shutdowns, because bacteria such as those that cause Legionnaires’ disease could have flourished.

Bars have been fully shut down since the start of the shelter-in-place order, while restaurants could open up for takeout all along and even offer cocktails to-go with food purchases. When alcohol-only establishments tried to bend the rules, there were repercussions.

The California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control handed The Snug, a year-old pub with no kitchen in the R Street Corridor, a cease-and-desist notice after it sold to-go drinks in early April. The Snug’s owners eventually moved their beverage program over to their other bar, de Vere’s Irish Pub, where gin and tonics could be served to-go alongside shepherd’s pies, salads and macaroni and cheese.

In contrast to restaurants, which haven’t been subject to county health inspections during the pandemic, bars that don’t follow state rules on reopening still face consequences from the ABC up to losing their liquor licenses. The state agency is likely to start with reminders and warnings before moving onto enforcement, though.

After closing Cheers in mid-March, George Conley spent the last three months sprucing up his West Sacramento watering hole with new paint, an elongated bar and additional seating. He would have liked to sell drinks to-go as well as sundries like toilet paper, but said Yolo County health officials told him he didn’t have the right license to do so.

About 30 percent of Cheers’ customers are seniors, Conley said, and treat his bar like a coffee shop, coming in with a newspaper and ordering one or two drinks. When bars shut down, Conley said his regulars got lonely.

“Older folks used to have place to go, and now they don’t have it,” Conley said in a mid-May interview with The Bee. “They’re not going there to get drunk, they’re not going to find a mate. They’re going there to converse and hang out with folks. There’s going to be a heck of a lot of impact for people that depend on these bars for social interaction.”

This story was originally published June 9, 2020 at 2:49 PM.