There are a couple of issues with a restaurant opening. However, the primary one is the safety of the staff. Placing tables far apart and having the staff who work with the guests directly wear masks may provide protection for the guests. However, the masks are really not very good at protecting the staff themselves. Supermarkets or banks, for example, can require all costumers to wear masks when there. However, I cannot see how this can work at a retaurant. I mean, will the guests have masks which they don when the servers come to ask them what they want, and then doff when the server gets 6 feet away so they can eat and drink? Does the server warn the table that they’re coming close? I don’t see how that works.
If they do buffets, than you are sharing that food containers with dozens of other families. They may be wearing masks, but they are touching the serving utensils with hands which may have touched the nose or eyes or mouth. Wearing gloves doesn’t really help, since then people touch their faces with gloved hands.
So I don’t see how restaurants can open without endangering their owrkers.
Some grocery stores had buffets where you could fill a specific size container for a given price with any of the food in the buffet. I went to such a grocery store recently and got food from the buffet to use up the coupons they gave for buying groceries there. Now they have you ask the person behind the counter to fill the container with the food you want, and the customer side is completely blocked off with a transparent plastic wrap barrier.
This is what a post-COVID19 restaurant will look like, as I see it.
A single table takes up the whole store since all the seats are 6 feet apart. You don’t sit on your chairs but hover over them. You can not touch or eat your feed, you can only take pictures of it and post them on Instagram; the dopamine from all the interaction your post gets will substitute for any nutrition that meal would have provided. The food itself is made exclusively using the elbows. Mandatory vaccine chips going in and out of the store.
I think a lot of restaurants and bars geared towards young adults will do fine. My S, who graduates in May and is living with us, will go to these places. It would be very difficult for those in their 20’s not to go. Which will then scare the daylights out of me that he will now bring it home. We can’t lock them up, can we?
As far restaurants that are geared towards older adults, I see them sparing the tables, and at bars. I’m In agreement with @anomander bullet points. I will not be comfortable in a restaurant. It’s not really the food that draws me anyway, but just being amongst people, we also love to sit at the bars and eat now at popular places in town.
I think I’m still in the denial, starting to go into anger stage of grief with this life altering change.
I’ve given this some thought, and restaurants as we knew them are not reopening any time soon, and if they did they won’t have customers, either because the customers are afraid of getting sick, or because they have much less discretionary money, or because they have gotten used to doing with less. By the time all that changes for the better, many/most of our current restaurants will be out of business and no one in their right mind will be opening new restaurants.
In terms of alcohol sales, the restaurants that do hang on will be doing a lot of takeout with bottles of wine or premixed bottles of cocktails. The individually crafted esoteric mixology cocktail with unusual ingredients will disappear, at least for now.
I have given this thought as we decide what to do with our botanical vodka brand that was set to launch April 1. The old route of store tastings and cocktail menus is gone for the foreseeable future. What would an online launch look like, when consumers can’t taste the brand first?
The reality is that many will not survive this. Those that could keep going doing delivery and take out might have a better chance. Where I was working , the local Chinese restaurant and pizza place have been continuing to be busy but they cut their staff down to skeletal. Hopefully they get some of the small business loan money that has been scarfed up by large businesses and hopefully they can ease into in house serving as restrictions are lifted. Both places are large in square footage so can start out with half full use of space, keeping to social distancing.
I think eateries like those two have a shot at it. But restaurants have always been in precarious financial positions as a group of businesses. A substantial number close each year. Also, at least these eateries had opportunities to stay open in diminished capacity during all of this unlike many other businesses. How some of these stores are going to make it is beyond me. If they have to pay back rent, and other expenses for a time they have had no income when margins were lean already, I don’t see them surviving.
This is an interesting thread and complex to think through. I think that the “regular” opening of restaurants will be a VERY slow process. Like not days or a few months. Maybe longer. I think that movement is dependent on when the COVID cases/deaths drop to a very low number.
I’m trying to think what some of these slow steps towards opening might be - you certainly may find holes in these thoughts!
more restaurants will open back up for take out. As people slowly go back to work they will want to pick up their coffee, muffin, salad to go, or even order take out for workplace meetings (socially distanced of course!)
restaurants may expand their take out menus. Some of ours have been pretty limited for the last several weeks.
potential for outdoor seating several feet apart. I would be more likely to chose al fresco dining if tables were truly many feet apart. Of course, this would really limit the # of outdoor tables a restaurant has.
-more ordering at a counter (with SD between the restaurant employee and the customer rather than tableside ordering - and then…
less serving, more pick up your meal at a counter away from restaurant staff.
I’m pretty happy to have the take out option. We don’t dine in that often anyway.
The other thing will be who will be dining out/together??? Families that have already been joined at the hip for months in the house??! How soon will we be meeting a friend(s) to sit at a table together? Unknown.
If we claim there are restaurants/bars that are mainly for the younger crowd I think they will be even LESS likely to try and meet any state requirements for opening if they think their customers are not going to SD.
What I CAN see in terms of socialization is ordering take out and inviting friends over to your outdoor deck with scattered seating for evening SD dining. That is doable. And right now sounds pretty darn awesome.
As thoroughly sick as I am of my own cooking, it will be a long while before I eat in a restaurant again. I’ll be interested to hear what measures restaurants adopt to address Covid-19 concerns, but until more is known about transmission and the true number of cases in my area, there’s not much a restaurant could do to reassure me.
I wouldn’t necessarily need to wait for a vaccine or treatment before returning, but will need to see several months of very few cases here. Great thread idea, @GKUnion - very insightful responses, too.
I hope restaurants can re-open…and I recognize there will be challenges.
One of my kids works at a high end restaurant (a shift or two a week). That place has been closed. Carry out just was not an option for them. I worry about the owner, and all of his employees. I hope he applied for PPP. Or something.
I was the last customer at a small cafe here before it closed. There is no “BOH”. Everything is prepared in full view of the patrons. There is only one employee. I hope they can re-open. They too have been closed since March.
There are towns in my state that have small downtowns that are built around restaurants. Hoping there is a way to save these too.
I don’t think it’s too likely that many restaurants will reopen very soon here as long as the furloughed workers can make more money from unemployment (with the extra $600 per week) than they can working. Why take a pay cut to go back to work? Better to just wait till July 31 when the extra $$$ expires. I know that’s the thinking of many of the hospitality workers here in south Florida.
Truly believe it depends on the location of the restaurants as far as if they are in “hot spots”. If there aren’t as many cases in the area, I think people will start to eat inside the restaurants if there is proper sanitizing of everything. Most will probably be using disposable tablecloths and possibly disposable cutlery, maybe alcohol type wipes available at all tables. Also, possible ordering at a counter instead of a waiter or waitress taking orders at tables. I am sure the restaurant systems are already coming up with a plan to do anything they can do to make customers feel safe. I’ll be back eating out occasionally (mostly lunch with friends), but definitely understand the fear of others especially those living in high density areas.
My dh is severely disabled and very vulnerable to this virus. The one thing - the ONE thing he had that kept him feeling like an independent human was getting an uber to one of 4 different restaurants where the friendly people knew him and took care of him. He did this almost daily for lunch. The notion of him being a shut in for another year is soul crushing for him. We would go out for dinner (no place fancy) all the time up to and including the very last day before the SAH order.
I don’t know what we are going to do. It terrified me before that he went to restaurants on his own (I have been known to secretly trail him to make sure he arrived ok), now, I don’t think I could handle it. But it was so essential to his mental health … I don’t know how this plays out for us.
Different slant on this thread - more venting than anything I guess…
So we own a restaurant building (not the business but the real estate). Have owned it for 15 yrs. Lots of highs and lows. Recently (pre Covid-19), restaurant went under and we decided to sell vs. continuing the rotation of owners (think we had 5 operators over a 15 yr period). Spent some money to prep for sale. Finally started getting some interest and then comes Covid -19. Of course no activity now and I can’t imagine anyone wanting to buy a restaurant with the uncertainty of how to operate in our new world (even if they are successful operators).Why take that risk.
So now we need to cover the cost (pretty hefty mortgage) for the foreseeable future (I’m thinking at least two yrs). Factor that in to your retirement plans…
Ok venting over. We will see what’s involved in converting to a different type of business (rezone, repurpose, etc.) Probably less expensive than the carry cost for a few yrs. Will also see if an investor would just buy and sit on it for a few yrs (if they get a good enough deal).
I was just now reading an article about how c19 transmission outdoors is very low risk and thought of something related to this thread. Although I’m not sitting down in a restaurant anytime soon, I would very happily order from a food truck (assuming social distancing for people in line).
Maybe we’ll see a surge in food trucks soon if they’re allowed early on as part of reopening. With business areas closed, they could drive around to various residential neighborhoods like ice cream trucks.
Would you please post a link to that article? That’s something I’ve guessed is true (between UV, airflow disruption and the dispersion of particle buildup that happens in enclosed areas) but would love to see some actual data. Thanks.
CBS news poll says 71% would not feel comfortable going to a bar or restaurant if it opened now. I think until there is some kind of assurance or informed consent it will not get better. I want to know, testing, that the virus is not still trending up. I want to know that testing of restaurant is total. Testing of patrons maybe but if it is contagious before fever is true then at door testing has limited value. Spacing is good. Our favorite high end restaurant already had that. Our favorite local did not. Spacing will have huge financial implications they may not survive. I also want stringent cleaning protocols. So maybe in another few months if there is no second spike. We do carry out with tips 2x a week at the local one. Hope it helps.
How soon will we be meeting a friend(s) to sit at a table together? Unknown.