San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Eateries and bars wrestling with mask decision
To gauge how San Antonio bars and restaurants will handle Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to rescind the Texas mask mandate and open Texas businesses at 100 percent, look to the Instagram page of downtown’s Pinch Boil House: “Mask and you shall receive.”
The sentiment reverberates through the social media pages of hospitality spots all over the city. The Friendly Spot in Southtown declares “masks required, beards optional.” And at the Hayden, a Jewish deli near Alamo Heights, it’s “no mask, no meatloaf.”
However lighthearted it sounds, the full-throttle reopening of bars and restaurants across the state Wednesday is a deadly serious issue for a hospitality industry throttled by COVID-19 rules for almost a full year now.
Many restaurants have decided to stick with the 75 percent occupancy setups they have now and require their staffs and customers to wear masks. But the burden of enforcing those rules now falls entirely to the restaurants, and many are wondering just how to do that — and whether they
even should.
On the one hand is the desire to keep their staff and the public safe. But after a year of the pandemic driving profits into the ground for most of the state’s hospitality industry, operators are hesitant to turn away any paying customer.
Jason Dady won’t be changing anything Wednesday at his multiple San Antonio restaurants.
The chef, whose properties include Tre Trattoria, Two Bros. BBQ, Range, Jardín and Alamo BBQ Co., said he knows he isn’t alone in that decision.
“I think the hospitality industry as a whole is bonding together to say this isn’t OK, and we’re going to keep our team safe,” Dady said. “If you look at any social media platform that has anything to do with independent restaurants or chefs, you’ll see that almost nobody supports this.”
Almost nobody but the large part of the bar industry that feels the pandemic restrictions and shutdown orders unfairly targeted them. Even if they believe it was too soon to lift the mask order, many are only too happy to be able to stop confronting customers fueled by liquid courage.
Jeret Peña, beverage director at the Esquire Tavern and owner of the cocktail bar and Thai restaurant Hello Paradise near the Pearl, said that while both places will maintain their mask policies, that resolve comes at a price.
“A lot of us have a sense of fatigue from the battles we’ve waged with guests not wearing masks,” he said, comparing it to the rigors of two-a-day football practices. “It’s taken a toll on operators. It’s taken a toll on staff.”
Russell Crawford, a veteran waiter who’s been at Bliss in Southtown for the past year, said asking customers to mask up is about as popular as telling drunken customers that they’re getting cut off.
“When you come back at them with something that hampers their good time, they react instantly,” he said.
Restaurants
John Russ, who owns and operates the Castle Hills restaurant Clementine with his wife, Elise, didn’t mince words when it came to his opinion on Abbott’s announcement.
“This is not a wise move by the leadership of our state. Essentially this is going to put my staff on the front lines,” Russ said. “We’re going to 100 percent continue with our masks, because that’s what the scientists at the CDC and in Europe and in Asia have said is the most effective way to keep our staff and guests healthy.”
Russ has no plans to return to full occupancy any time soon.
The restaurant’s large community table is gone, as is the dining public’s desire to sit elbow to elbow with persons unknown.
Russ said the remaining tables in Clementine’s dining room will remain safely distanced because he doesn’t believe customers would be willing to visit at all if they knew they’d be crammed into a “sardine can” of a dining room.
Don “Skeeter” Miller, president of the County Line family of barbecue restaurants with six locations in Texas and New Mexico, said he generally supports how Abbott has handled restaurant policy during the pandemic, especially the decision to allow restaurants to continue to sell alcohol to go.
“I think what the governor’s done, honestly, is fantastic. The governor has been so good by allowing us to do alcohol to go,” he said.
But even he would have liked to have seen the mask orders to stay in place.
Miller will not be changing the distancing of tables inside his restaurants — a significant compromise, he said, because maintaining 6 feet between tables means he can’t get any of his properties above 50 percent occupancy. His staff will remain masked, and health screenings including a temperature check will remain mandatory at the beginning of each employee’s shift.
But he will seat customers who refuse to put on a mask because he can’t afford to turn away business. The dip in tourism in San Antonio has been a knockout punch for the County Line location on the River Walk, which went from being the brand’s top-performing property to among the worst as visitors dried up.
“When tourists come to Texas, they always want barbecue, and they’re staying downtown,” Miller said. “It’s a gagger when all of the hotels are empty and the River Walk is a ghost town.”
Miller remains optimistic that his properties will survive, particularly as more Texans get vaccinated. But business as usual can’t come soon enough.
“Everybody’s just kind of hanging on for dear life. It’s cost our company $7 million in sales,” Miller said. “We’ve got to get back to normal.”
Terry Corless, who owns five River Walk bars and restaurants and who co-owns the upcoming Little Rhein Prost Haus, spelled out the dilemma facing restaurant owners: safety vs. profits.
“I think it’s premature,” he said of the governor’s decision. “The system has gone to such great lengths to get us to this level, why would you not hold on for a couple of months?”
At the same time, Corless said that after losing as much as $85,000 a month at the height of COVID-19 restrictions, “we need to ramp up to some degree because we need to survive.”
Corless said staff members will be required to wear masks at his Mad Dogs British Pub, Bier Garten River Walk, Maddy McMurphy’s Irish Pub, the Frosty Dog and On the Bend Oyster Bar and Cigar Lounge. They’ll “respectfully request” that customers do the same, he said, but no one will be turned away for not wearing a mask.
“We neither have the strength nor the resources to control people,” he said, adding that some customers opposed to mask rules have been abusive. “We don’t want to be fighting with people.”
Bars
The reopening has at least one bar owner partying like it’s 2019.
George Todt, the owner of Barflys on Broadway just outside Loop 410 and a 35-year veteran of the San Antonio bar business, said he did everything he could to make his patrons feel safe and welcome after being closed for about seven months in 2020. He spent $2,800 installing a plexiglass barrier that surrounded his bar, with groupings of seats that were separated by dividers.
“The inspectors that came and saw this, took pictures and cited what we did as an ideal model for safety,” Todt said.
Still, once he got word of Abbott’s decision, his customers joined him in an impromptu party to celebrate the new lack of rules and to disassemble those barriers.
“It was such a sterile environment (with the plexiglass),” Todt said. “I wanted to protect my workers, and I wanted to protect my customers. But I maintain masks and other protocols should be a personal decision. Our health scores have always been good, so we already had a reputation for cleanliness.”
Todt’s already running Barflys like he did pre-COVID, and nobody inside the building is required to wear a mask. But he’s keeping the plexiglass in his garage, just in case.
There may not have been a more vocal advocate for the bar industry since the pandemic hit than Braunda Smith, co-owner of Lucy Cooper’s Texas Ice House on the North Side off U.S. 281. She has consistently and publicly denounced the governor’s emergency orders and what she perceives as a finger pointed unjustly at the bar industry.
She was forced to shutter her doors for almost five months and said she spent nearly all her family’s savings to avoid permanent closure.
“We’re not some big corporation;
we’re a mom-and-pop place that wants people to have a good time,” Smith said. “So many of us are. And with a return to 100 percent, now I guess we are thrust into a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario’ with the masks.”
Smith said her food and beverage staff will continue to wear face shields and that she will allow her customers to decide what’s best.
Justin Vitek, an owner of three large, popular San Antonio bars — Hills & Dales Icehouse on the Northwest Side, Babcock Social Club and On the Rocks Pub downtown — also plans to leave the mask-wearing up to his customers, but also his staff.
“If you ask me if the mask mandate being lifted is too soon, I would say yes. But I will not force my patrons to wear them, nor do I want my staff to act like the police,” Vitek said. “You could make an argument that this decision could happen a year from now, and the mixed responses would be the same.
“We had a very tough year at all of our properties, as have all bar owners, and need to get back to full business. We will offer free masks to customers, there will be hand sanitizer at every table, and as soon as anybody leaves, those seats and tables will be wiped down.”
Customers
On the River Walk on Friday afternoon, people were wearing goofy hats at Dick’s Last Resort and walking around with frozen margaritas in plastic souvenir glasses like always. But for much of the past year, the River Walk stood silent sentinel to the city’s hobbled hospitality industry. It’s only recently begun to hum again, but with about half its usual beehive intensity.
“You can see how (the pandemic) is hurting the tourism industry,” said Rhonda Guilliams, visiting from Missouri. She said her family, going maskless while they walked, would nevertheless abide by whatever mask rules they came across at restaurants and businesses, even though their home state already has fewer restrictions. Guilliams said she’s already been vaccinated and feels safe going out.
Jessica Foederer from Spicewood northwest of Austin was strolling the River Walk with her three young children, all wearing masks. She said they recently moved from Spain, where COVID-19 restrictions are much tighter, and that she’ll respect individual mask requirements even when the state mandate is lifted.
“If you’re a private business, you have the right to do what you feel is right for you,” she said. “Let’s do our part.”
Richard Peacock, owner of popular burger joint Chris Madrid’s and the genteel Paloma Blanca in Alamo Heights, said he won’t be changing anything come Wednesday.
“I would be foolish to think that we’re not going to get some resistance,” he said. “But I’d rather go to bed feeling comfortable with our decision than worrying about the response.”
Peacock predicted that the next 12 to 18 months will be the best in the restaurant industry’s history as people start coming back together.
“As Thoreau said, human beings were not meant to live lives of quiet desperation,” he said. “Human beings were designed to be in community.”