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Indoor Dining Will Return To NYC On Valentine's Day
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James Ramsay
Published Jan 29, 2021
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By
James Ramsay
Published Jan 29, 2021
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Governor Andrew Cuomo will allow New York City restaurants to open for indoor dining on Valentine’s Day, he announced at a press briefing today.
"As data on infection rates and hospitalizations continue to improve, we must begin taking steps to jumpstart our economic recovery as long as public health can be protected," he said. "The restaurant industry is the lifeblood of New York City and the economic hardship they have endured at the hands of COVID is nothing short of tragic. Thankfully, if our current trajectory holds, we will be able to reopen New York City dining at 25% capacity on Valentine's Day. This doesn't only give us more time to stamp out the virus even further, but also gives restaurants ample notice to begin preparing for a reopening." (The reopening will be subject to state guidance, which can be found here.)
Indoor dining in the city, which was abruptly suspended last March, resumed for two months in the fall before closing again in December. Cuomo justified the second ban by citing the dangerously low rate of open hospital beds, which was around 18% — as bad as it had been since April.
As of Thursday, about 25% of the city’s hospital beds were vacant.
Dr. Denis Nash, an epidemiologist at the City University of New York, told Gothamist earlier this week that the twin issues of a vaccination effort hamstrung by a lack of supplies and growing concerns over new variants make indoor dining an unnecessary new vector for transmission.
“No doubt we could use the tax revenue, but we could also use fewer deaths and hospitalizations,” said Nash. “So I don't understand the calculus.”
Still, restaurant owners and industry advocates have argued that indoor dining should resume in the name of regional fairness. In Westchester, Long Island, and New Jersey, restaurants have been allowed to operate indoors at up to 50% capacity, despite those areas sometimes having higher COVID-19 infection rates than the five boroughs.
Friday's announcement that city restaurants won't be able to open indoors until Sunday, February 14th got a bittersweet reaction, especially since the entirety of Valentine's Day weekend could've been a profitable three days.
"Restaurants are broken hearted that they need to wait two weeks until Valentine’s Day to open at only 25% occupancy in the city, while permitting 50% occupancy in dining rooms around the rest of the state where infections and hospitalization rates from COVID-19 are higher," said Andrew Rigie, the executive director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance.
In New York City, where many restaurants have sprung for elaborate, heated outdoor dining setups, it’s still not clear how many businesses were getting by with take-out and outdoor dining alone. An audit by the state comptroller’s office released last year said that up to half of New York City’s bars and restaurants would be forced to close permanently within six months.
"No matter how many heaters we put up, no matter how many structures we build in the street, it’s still cold outside," said Shawanna McDonald, whose restaurant in Bed-Stuy, The Southern Comfort, has a heated outdoor patio. "People want to come out of their house and enjoy a warm meal."
McDonald said that given the precautions her restaurant puts in place — temperature checks, a new air filtration system, keeping a window cracked — both her customers and employees are eager to return to indoor dining.
For restaurants on the edges of the outer boroughs, pegging indoor dining rules to local infection rates can be doubly frustrating, since diners often travel in from the suburbs, anyway. Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, for example, claims that 80% of patrons come from 10 to 40 miles outside the neighborhood.
"People want to come to Arthur Avenue for the food, but when they get here and realize that we’re not Westchester — that the Bronx is in New York City and we’re not open indoors — they decide it’s too cold to sit outside," said Regina Delfino, who owns the 101-year-old restaurant Mario’s.
At a restaurant the size of Mario’s, which normally seats 150 people, any indoor dining can have a big effect. Right now, she has five tables set up outside, but with 25% capacity allowed indoors, she can seat an extra 45 people. The change will also enable her to re-hire servers, bussers, and kitchen staff.
"At 25%, I can have more than half my staff come back," she said. "People are getting tired of staying home, and being on unemployment doesn’t really pay their bills."
Still, not all restaurant staff feel comfortable returning for indoor dining, especially when they’re not currently among the groups of New Yorkers with a green light to get vaccinated. Since the pandemic started, many servers have reported that customer entitlement is up, tipping is down, and the nature of hospitality has changed, with face masks and QR codes taking over the experience.
Alexey, a server on the Upper West Side who asked Gothamist not to use his last name, said that when indoor dining was allowed last fall, the relationship between staff and customers constantly felt on edge.
"I have to take their temperature, their information, their address, their phone number — it creates a lot of tension between the customer and the server," he said. "Nobody knows how to work with this."
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indoor dining
restaurants
James Ramsay
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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