The much debated vaccine mandate that Minneapolis and St. Paul jointly announced last week has now taken affect for restaurants and bars in the state's two biggest cities.
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The Twin Cities joins other big cities like New York City, Los Angeles, New Orleans and more in instituting indoor vaccine mandates. While studies are still out on what these mandates have done to restaurants and bars in those cities, News Talk 830 WCCO Political Analyst Blois Olson says that he expects Twin Cities businesses to adapt to the mandate.
"I think you're seeing every restaurant adapting and operationally seeing what they need to do. I think you're going to see a lot of dining rooms close and go to take-out only."
While restaurant owners have had mixed reactions about the impending mandate, Olson concedes that the vaccine mandate isn't the only reason why he thinks restaurants are altering their operations. He says there are some other underlying factors to those decisions.
"That's (vaccine mandate) just one of the struggles they've had, between staffing and other things. January is a tough month for restaurants. Not many people go out, so business for dine-in hasn't been as high."
The mandate will also be hitting sports arenas and concert venues in the Twin Cities. On January 26th, the mandate goes into effect for ticketed events. While the Minnesota Wild don't have a home game until March 1st, the Timberwolves will be putting new measures in place to enforce the mandate. Some of those include hiring more staff and opening earlier, according to Timberwolves COO Ryan Tanke.
"We're going to have to go and hire additional staff and I think it will just be an additional layer for people going in. The goal is to get people in safely and smoothly. Important to note, we are going to open doors for our remaining home games 30 minutes earlier. Just an options so that fans can come down a little earlier and seamlessly get into the building."