Reopening: Alameda County ends indoor dining ban.
Indoor service can resume at lower capacity
Restaurants in Alameda County resumed indoor dining Friday for the first time in more than seven months. It’s the last part of the Bay Area to have maintained such restrictions for so long, and one of only two counties where indoor dining remained offlimits.
For food businesses that have had to get by first on takeout and delivery orders, and later with outdoor dining under strict health-safety rules, it’s a relief.
Leigh Fike, director of sales and marketing at Plank in Oakland’s Jack London Square, said resuming indoor dining “just feels like we’re getting back on our feet again.”
Plank particularly benefited from Alameda County’s loosening of rules. The combination restaurant and entertainment center opened in 2014, featuring 18 bowling lanes, billiards, a videogame arcade and a capacious beer garden. In addition to dining, the county also allowed some forms of family entertainment to open again.
Plank reopened its arcade, bowling alley and indoor dining area Friday for the first time since March. The business completely shuttered when Alameda County issued its shelter-in-place order in the spring, but reopened its beer garden for outdoor dining in late June.
The beer garden “helped generate some revenue for us, but to offer our indoor dining again at 25% is still safe and it feels like we’re getting back into the swing of things,” Fike said.
Alameda County has generally maintained tighter strictures on reopening than what the state permits for an area with its health status. In early October, as it reached the red tier in California’s colorcoded reopening plan, county officials wrote that the indoor dining allowed under state guidelines remained risky. As it reached the orange tier of California’s colorcoded reopening plan last week, which allows restaurants to resume indoor operations at 50% capacity, the county said it would wait until later in the month. It said Wednesday it would allow dinein service at 25% capacity limits sooner than expected because measures of new coronavirus infections, positive test rates and COVID19 hospitalizations remained “stable.”
In the Bay Area, only Sonoma County is at the mostrestrictive purple tier, which does not allow for any indoor dining. California ordered restaurants and bars in the county to close in July, before the new tier system had been imposed.
Plank is opening four out of 18 bowling lanes. About 20 people can be in Plank’s arcade area at once. All guests must wear gloves when playing the games, Fike said. That’s on top of the maskwearing, distancing and sanitization requirements common to other reopened businesses.
Samantha Smith, a bartender at Liege Spirits Lounge in the nearby downtown, grabbed lunch Friday with her son and his father at Plank’s outdoor patio. As temperatures in the Bay Area drop, Smith said she’s glad the county eased restrictions.
“Even today it was a little chilly,” Smith said. “They should reopen as safely as possible, because I’m also very much for the small business owners who should be able to continue with their business through the winter.”
As a bartender herself, she said she understands the pain and uncertainty other food and beverage workers have dealt with because of the pandemic, so she supports any easing of restrictions so long “as people are being safe.”
Some restaurants she frequented remained take out only and didn’t make use of outdoor dining, she said: “I really enjoy that I can now go and sit down to eat.”
“The quarantine has had a major effect on my lifestyle,” said Ben Lang, a Plank customer Friday. As a single man who lives alone, he said he was looking forward to other Oakland restaurants reopening. “I can promise you that I will never take a waiter, bartender, or chef for granted again,” he added.
Other restaurateurs say that resuming indoor dining is a step in the right direction — if done responsibly.
“Obviously, being outside is much better for slowing the spread of the virus, but we do feel that if we do things safely and are conscious, we can be successful in reopening inside,” said Chris Pastena, owner of Calavera, a Mexican restaurant in Oakland. “Financially, which is obviously a concern for everybody, having people dine inside our premises gives us the ability to increase revenue.”
He said the pandemic’s impact was devastating at first. He had to furlough his entire staff. Now, Pastena said Calavera has successfully adapted by serving takeout orders and doing outdoor dining. He said he hadn’t heard about the county’s new date for resuming indoor service.
Agave Uptown, an upscale Oaxacan restaurant in Oakland, allowed guests to eat indoors Friday and would formally offer indoor dining sometime next week, said Leigh Gross Mitchell, private dining events manager. She said it was a smart move for the county to delay indoor dining even when it had the green light to do so.
“I think if we had opened the restaurants too quickly and people began to get sick again and everything closed, I think that would have been more devastating and harder on the staff, as well as people’s comfort levels,” Gross Mitchell said.
Fike also said she thinks delaying indoor dining was “safer for the community as a whole,” even if it economically impacted already battered restaurants.
“You got to do what you got to do,” she added.
For some restaurants, switching to outdoor dining wasn’t as simple as simply moving chairs and tables outside.
“We’ve never done anything outdoors previously because just a parklet would not allow us to have enough tables to make it financially viable to reopen,” said Miles Palliser, one of the managing partners of the Athletic Club, a sports bar in Oakland that also serves food. “But we are one of the lucky ones who have been able to participate in the Flex Street program.”
The city of Oakland launched that initiative in June to make “it easier for retailers, restaurants and other allowed businesses to use larger portions of the sidewalk, parking lanes and streets,” according to the city’s website.
Businesses interested in the program were asked to apply for a permit. Palliser said the program helped keep his business afloat.
“They actually closed down one block around the corner of Brandon and Webster, so we have been working with that outdoor area,” Palliser said.
The Athletic Club didn’t open for indoor dining Friday.
“I think we’re going to take this new ruling and figure out what the benefit would be. Overall because we are lucky enough to have an outdoor area, so we might just stay safe and keep it outdoors for now,” Palliser said.
He also said it was a wise decision for the county to have voluntarily delayed indoor dining.
While Alameda County restaurants are just getting a taste of normalcy, neighboring San Francisco reached the yellow tier, the least restrictive level of reopening. The mayor’s office said in a statement that restaurants can operate indoor dining at 50% capacity starting Nov. 3 — doubling the number of people allowed inside.