State employees and Golden State Warriors fans filled most of Public House Downtown by 5:30 p.m. on a recent Monday. Game 5 of the NBA Finals was still a half-hour away from tipping off, but customers were already well into gigantic $6 Bavarian-style pretzels, $7 cocktails and $8 truffle-prosciutto pizzas.

Public House Downtown’s next-door neighbor on 16th Street, Petra Greek, had its own afternoon specials, including $4 feta-covered fries and $2 Pabst Blue Ribbon on tap. A block away sat Juju Kitchen & Cocktails, a new small-plates concept kitty-corner from Capitol Park, and the balmy patio of Public House Downtown’s sister restaurant Cafeteria 15L.

Happy hours are back across Sacramento, particularly the downtown/midtown core, after all but disappearing during the worst of the pandemic. New restaurants are opening with a focus on small bites and cocktails, and existing places are again offering 4 p.m.-6 p.m. discounts in hopes of attracting office workers and friend groups.

People are eager to get back to in-person gatherings, restaurant owners say, after two long years of physical distance and Netflix.

“After living through screens for so long, we’re out in world again. There’s beauty you can touch with your hands, you can take picture with a neon sign,” Michel said. “There’s a realness to it, and that’s something people are craving after COVID.”

Many people are also on a budget with rapidly rising inflation eating away their bank accounts. That makes the happy hour discount an extra incentive to draw a crowd.

The deals can be drastic — Public House Downtown makes almost all pizzas and appetizers half-off from 3 p.m.-6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and cuts cocktails prices from $11 to $7. And from the restaurants’ perspective, what was once an untenable business move has become near necessity.

“Happy hour, it’s back,” Prelude Kitchen & Bar chef Tom Patterson said. “I think for a restaurant’s survival, you almost have to have it.”

WHY SHUT DOWN?

Prelude Kitchen & Bar had big happy hour shoes to fill when it opened across the street from Capitol in December. Owner Allen Kou, also the man behind Zinfandel Grille in Arden Arcade, opened his new restaurant at 1117 11th St. where steakhouse and martini bar Chops reigned as a politico watering hole from 2003 to 2017.

Chops’ successor, the Diplomat, had a less successful stint from 2018-19, and that prime real estate remained empty throughout the pandemic. Prelude Kitchen & Bar established a customer base over its first few months, then rolled out its happy hour menu as temperatures began warming in March.

Several other restaurants followed suit around the same time, said Downtown Sacramento Partnership spokesperson Madelyn Smith, as mask restrictions were lifted and daylight started lasting longer into the evening. A year or two prior, though, Sacramento’s happy hour scene was looking pretty sad.

Downtown Sacramento’s once-dependable white collar workforce suddenly started working from home and Golden 1 Center events were canceled, negating pre-game or post-work drinks from the city’s lexicon. Restaurants and bars’ social distancing requirements shifted frequently, from to-go only to outdoor patios to 25% indoor occupancy and back, and those in the city core and suburbs alike were scrambling to keep up rather than offer discounts.

Even after restaurants and bars got the green light to open fully in early 2021, most couldn’t find enough staff and focused on lunch or dinner instead of an in-between meal.

“To actually have a bartender on and cooks on just to do happy hour didn’t really make financial sense,” Patterson said. “That’s kind of what happened at my last place (Fabian’s Italian Bistro in Fair Oaks). We did happy hour, but then when COVID happened, everyone did to-go’s for six months and it just squashed it.”

A NEW CONCEPT

Bacon & Butter owners Amber Michel and Billy Zoellin had hour-long lines for their restaurant’s ultra-fluffy pancakes in Tahoe Park. They opened a second, highly-anticipated location in affluent East Sacramento in January 2019. What could go wrong?

The pandemic, and the collapse of indoor dining. Brunch is meant to be a social, leisurely experience full of items that wilt easily to-go boxes — French toast, bacon or fried eggs, for example. More than, say, pizza or fried rice, Bacon & Butter’s core items didn’t translate well to to-go service.

Armed with a full liquor license, they decided to switch up their concept. Zoellin and Michel closed Bacon & Butter in East Sacramento, covered it in verdant decor and reopened it in March as the Green Room, a new concept based around small plates and drinks.

“It’s not a commitment to 2 a.m. in the morning, it’s not a commitment to a full-on bar experience,” Michel said. “It’s a way to get together with your friends for a quick drink before dinner.”

People were immediately drawn to the Green Room’s Instagrammable apple cider mules and avocado margaritas, but afternoon traffic remained slow until the restaurant introduced “Emerald Hour” in late May.

From 3 p.m.-4:30 p.m., one cocktail normally listed at $13 goes for $8, draft beer and well drinks are $5 and Montucky Cold Snack lagers are just $3 per can. Happy hour food specials rotate daily, though customers can always get pickled mussels on grilled bread or onion blossoms with green goddess dressing for around $10.

About 30% of the Green Room’s revenue comes from Emerald Hour specials these days, Michel said, even though they account for just 18% of the business’ open hours and inherently carry reduced prices. Employees of a nearby hospital, architecture firm and skin center have come hungering for casual in-person interactions, as have people working from home.

Not all order alcoholic drinks, either. As people’s social habits changed during the pandemic, so did attitudes about drinking. Non-alcoholic craft beverages have become integral to many bars’ lineups, Michel said.

“If you don’t drink, it doesn’t matter,” Michel said. “There’s so many mocktails and non-alcoholic drinks that it’s more about the company and atmosphere and having a new experience, and I feel like people are desperate for that.”

THINKING CREATIVELY

That happy hours have returned is no accident. So has afternoon foot traffic around downtown and midtown Sacramento. But disillusioned by promises of a return to full-time office work that haven’t fully come true, restaurateurs are increasingly seeking out customers from farther away.

Revival, the high-end rooftop bar connected to the Kimpton Sawyer hotel in Downtown Commons, offers oysters for just a dollar and $7 glasses of Chandon sparkling wine starting at 4 p.m. during “Shuck Mondays.”

Tiger has changed its concept several times since opening on 7th and K streets in 2018, settling for now as a dinner-only restaurant and late-night live music venue three days per week. The two-story business opens at 8 p.m. Thursday, then at 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday for a weekend happy hour with $6 cocktails and half-off bottles of wine.

“It’s very clear to us that we can no longer rely on a return to office full-time, and we have to make sure that businesses down here can stop focusing on surviving and start focusing on thriving,” Smith of the downtown partnership said. “How can we pivot and turn this place into somewhere that people choose to be?”

Specialty items are one way, Patterson said. While some places simply drop a dollar or two from existing food and drinks during happy hour, others like Prelude Restaurant & Bar break out a separate menu full of items not offered at other times.

An independent happy hour menu allows chefs to test recipes and feature small plates that might not fit among the full dinner offerings. Prelude’s rotating happy menu lacks the high-dollar steaks and pork chops one can get later in the night, but has spiced nuts with candied bacon and beef-ricotta meatball sliders.

It’s a delicate balance, though, determining how casual to go.

“You just want to have a little bit of what people are going to like. Meatball sliders have always been kind of a thing, and we’ve got truffle fries,” Patterson said. “But then we also take a lot of time and confit the chicken drumsticks for three hours in duck fat, and then fry them. Some things are more fine dining, and other things are just more happy hour-ish.”

This story was originally published June 17, 2022 at 5:00 AM.