Even without the extra $600, there is little incentive to go back to work in restaurants.
At both the restaurant where my husband works, and the restaurant(s) I was laid off from, the hours are greatly shortened.
The shifts are now 4-5 hours long in the evening with no lunch shift. There is no need for servers, bus boys, or anyone beyond a skeletal staff.
Although H’s place is keeping managers on full salary for now, how much longer can that continue? Until the PPP money runs out?
At my place, all salaried employees are either laid off or making hourly now. It’s a substantial reduction in pay. And this is with PPP money!
The employees with the most incentive to accept whatever work there is are undocumented workers.
At H’s place, these are also the employees that did not disclose they were feeling ill, and infected the BOH with C19, including members of their own households and perhaps beyond. This resulted in the restaurant closing for two full weeks.
IMO, there needs to be strong incentives for sick workers to be honest about their health status and have the ability to stay home.
Most of his crew live with many people in smaller living quarters. There is shuffling of kids around as the women help each other with child care. There is carpooling.
We are VERY concerned about the viability of these restaurants — it’s clear people are not going to rush back to eating out in sit-down restaurants. Many of our regular guests were +60 yo.
Where are all these hospitality workers going to earn enough money to live on?
On a “COVID Neurosis Scale” of 1 to 10, I’m about a 15. So, that being said, I won’t be going into any restaurants or bars any time soon and maybe not into 2021.
Pre-COVID, I ate lunch out every Friday with friends and got carry-out another 1-2 times a week. I will miss those Friday lunches, but I can’t imagine any of the places we’ve frequented being able to enforce any kind of social distancing. I will keep getting carry-out, and that will be the extent of my restauranting.
That Chinese study of how COVID was transmitted in a restaurant was interesting. I know someone (was it on this thread?) found it comforting, and it sounded to me like they would consider eating in a restaurant that figured out the air flow (among other things). I am sure that a proportion of people would agree with that. But I’m also sure a proportion would agree with my POV, which is that I don’t trust a restaurant to adequately figure out how their AC or heating is blowing air; I didn’t find the study comforting, I found it alarming that someone across the room could get infected through the air.
Despite all my doom and gloom I of course hope that I’m wrong! And I think that the way for people to come back is finding effective treatment/prevention of COVID.
Of alcohol? Even if there weren’t 3 million liquor laws that vary by city, county, state and federally making that a mess to navigate legally it would be a bad idea for a business to send free samples of alcohol without being able to verify the age, etc of the recipients. I wouldn’t do this.
But you could try to do some creative guerilla marketing in an attempt to get viral publicity. News is looking for interesting things and as states open, it would be interesting to do some sort of open air, moving speakeasy events (could even be in the form of an Ice Cream truck for adults) that spread the word, giving fun samples in an interesting format while avoiding crowds and indoor airspace. While it would be hard to generate enough visits to personally connect and allow individuals to sample, if you get only a few people thinking this is cool and posting pics/locations on their social media you’d get reasonable publicity.
Good ideas guys, but totally illegal Liquor is INCREDIBLY tightly regulated!! Also, no large events happening any time soon.
Agree, any launch would have to have an element of guerrilla marketing, and my guess is that if one launched into these tough economic headwinds, that right there is a story, because almost no one would be doing that.
We are really on the fence, it is 50-50 or maybe even 60-40 that we’ll just shut down vs. launch in a new way. Still more information is needed before we pull the plug, though.
Def for me as a nurse I would just be visualizing germs moving all around me so it would take a lot. I would be considering restaurant workers inadvertently moving salt&pepper shakers and the like between tables without sanitizing. You would need almost sterile technique in terms of moving between tables so as to not share table A’s germs with table B. How do people eat with masks on? You really want to avoid being in the same air space with other people who are not in your household for long periods of time. For me it was take a vaccine or a proven treatment, proof that I was already immune or near zero activity in my area.
We are in a hot spot area though (Montco, PA) so we have seen and been thru alot here. We are supporting our local businesses by buying gift cards, lots of take-out, and contactless pick-up. Also they are doing grocery deliery with the food instead of cooking with it and they throw in TP for us …since we can’t find any here!!!
Please excuse all the typo’s …I can’t find my reading glasses lolol
@sabaray thanks for the link! It is interesting, and got a huge amount of attention for only giving away 20 drinks, didn’t it?! Tucking the idea away for future reference . . .
Even pre-COVID I was uncomfortable with my perception of the cooties on shared salt/pepper, menus, trays people’s meals come out, poor handwashing between taking dirty dishes away and touching other things like water faucets.
I carried wipes for my hands for before eating, for this purpose, and still worried about the silverware , chair edges (where everyone holds them to pull in), and table surfaces (on the ever-more-common sheet of glass over the placeholder tablecloth that touches everyone who sits down).
I didn’t even let myself worry about a cook sneezing or other issues in the kitchen itself.
That said, I love eating in full-service restaurants so much that we still did it! With emphasis on the places with easily accessible sinks for hand-washing with adequate soap, paper towels, push-doors (feet), and open-access trash cans in the bathrooms.
But. I’m not even willing to go to the dentist, dermatologist, or eye doctor for the foreseeable future, and those I really need. Restaurants will be a long time coming.
We actually order in now more often than we used to eat out. Years ago, DH and I decided on quality over quantity, and cut back eating out dramatically preferring the occasional higher-end meal instead.
But during the pandemic we want to support some of our locally owned places. Their presence adds character and desirability to our neighborhood, and I want to help them get through this. My fear, though, is that oh so many small area businesses will permanently bite the dust… sigh.
We have been doing take out once a week. It isn’t as enjoyable as eating in a restaurant, but at least I get a break from cooking. We have been very, very picky about who we purchase from. A drive up staffed with teens, for example, was crossed off our list until the pandemic has passed. The family-owned-and-operated pizza parlor who donates a lot of money to DD’s high school and drops our order in our trunk gets our business every other week.
If I haven’t gotten sick from these take out places while under SIP, I will probably feel comfortable dining in when they reopen. I’d expect the restaurant to take resonable precautions, like generously spreading out tables (maybe they put plexiglass between booths), hand santitizer is available, etc. No one can expect guarantees, but I am just saying if I trust them enough now to order take out, I am expecting things won’t be any worse when I am physically there and can watch out for things. They don’t want to be hearing customers complain if it’s not right.
I share everyone’s concern that restaurants can operate profitably in an environment of 50% (or less) capacity, though. It isn’t really sustainable.
H works in food service, currently operating two “restaurants” in a retirement community. Obviously a whole new level of precautions taking place there. He is extremely particular about where our food comes from normally and even more so now.
Eating out is a big part of our social life, but the reality is we can’t support everywhere. There’s a casual chain restaurant we eat at fairly regularly, and we’ve continued to pick up meals there. A local fine dining restaurant that offers selections from their regular menu and “family meals” - also a popular choice with us, we even got our Easter dinner from them. Finally, two restaurants that are under the same ownership umbrella have joined together with chef made ready meals - require reheating, but they are good. Not what you would get at the restaurant, but still very good.
Living in a college town, there are numerous restaurants that have catered to students and now that the students are gone, the restaurants probably won’t be here in the fall. It’s unfortunate, because in most cases the food was good, but we never felt valued as customers. We’ve picked the places we enjoy and feel valued to support.
And what about bathrooms? When things reopen, if you’re out of the house for several hours or more - restaurant, beach reopening, whatever - what if the need strikes? I’m not ready for that in the COVID-19 world yet.
Here is my guess. Some of these restaurants will continue to do a brisk carry out business. If they have figured this out (and lots here have) this can continue to be a portion of their business.
If that is the case, reducing the number of seats in the restaurant might not have as big an impact. I hope.
It’s the places that will be reducing seating but don’t do carry out or delivery who will have difficulty sustaining. Our high end restaurants in our area are…closed. They aren’t doing carry out. Some of these places cost a couple hundred dollars or more for two people. We will return to our favorites, but I think it will be challenging for them to sustain at 1/2 capacity or less.
Beachgoers probably do it in the ocean, just like the seals and whales.
High volume buffet type restaurants would also have issues, if they need to allocate several employees to serve the food at what would otherwise be the self-serve buffet line (this could also apply to salad bars are otherwise non-buffet restaurants).
Hm. Maybe because I’m normally a bit of a germaphobe, but bathrooms are really not high on my list of worries because I’ve been treating them like they’re coated with Ebola for years already. So my bathroom germ avoidance is highly practiced.
I’m more worried about things I can’t control (breathing in things that are in the air for example) and less about the things I can control (like contaminated surfaces where I am likely to be infected only if I first touch the surface then myself before washing or sanitizing.) So along those lines I wouldn’t exactly love going to a public bathroom right now, but I’d feel as long as I washed my hands well and then didn’t touch anything on the way out - which I have already been doing for years - I’d feel more comfy there than in an enclosed room with recirculating air from other people for an extended period of time.
But… there really isn’t good data so this is a guess based on what data I’ve seen and I keep reading to see if more data comes out to change, modify for expand my understanding.
@emilybee, well, he’s just graduated college and no job. He’s a good son and we’re not kicking him on the curb. I’d rather we know where he’s going, then lie to us and go, right? That would be easy enough to do and an option if we give him your choice.
I’m sorry, I just don’t go for the “find your own place” mentality all the time. He has social isolated with us for 6 weeks now, with good humor.
DH will eventually go back to work meeting clients, being by colleagues. That is a risk he is bringing home. Maybe I should kick him out too, they can go live together.
@abasket, I think you’re right. Until those places have social distance regulations, they probably won’t open. They are basically huge bars anyway.
Liquor is INCREDIBLY tightly regulated!! Also, no large events happening any time soon.