As some retail business reopens today in Napa, San Francisco and San Mateo counties, Bay Area restaurants are eagerly awaiting the day that they can reopen their dining rooms.
A new survey by the Golden Gate Restaurant Association found that two-thirds of San Francisco’s restaurants have had to lay off at least half their staff, and 87% say they cannot survive on just takeout or delivery.
When restaurants do reopen, service will look quite different. Placer County was one of the first to loosen shelter restrictions, and Brookfields Restaurant in Roseville welcomed diners back over the weekend with disposable and digital menus that people could pull up on their phones, all staff wearing masks and diligent cleaning in between groups.
Customers also had to ask for single serve items like salt, pepper, sugar, cream and ketchup; items that used to be on the table but no longer can be.
“People don’t mind waiting the few extra minutes it’s going to take to get a couple of creamers for you, a couple of sugars for you, a couple of napkins for you,” says manager Patricia Wysocki. “Customers were appreciating the fact that even though they waited up front, that they were watching us clean the table entirely. We cleaned the whole table top, we sanitized the seats, we cleaned the walls next to the booth.”
Despite fewer customers, Wysocki says they needed twice the usual support staff to bus and sanitize tables.
Wysocki says despite the slower service and reduced business, both customers and staff were grateful for the return to some normalcy.
The GGRA survey found that 64% of San Francisco restaurants plan to reopen once it is allowed, even though capacity restrictions will limit their potential profits.
Last week, Governor Gavin Newsom released guidelines for dine-in service but it is not clear when Bay Area restaurants will get the green light.
