Restaurant, bar workers can deliver food, drinks

In addition to offering takeout food and alcohol during the coronavirus shutdown, Colorado restaurants and bars can now deliver their products without having to go through third-party services and drivers.

Gov. Jared Polis on Friday announced this latest, temporary loosening of the law for restaurant and bar businesses.

Polis previously allowed for restaurants and bars to sell their usual alcoholic beverage offerings to-go, even though third-party delivery services couldn’t legally deliver them. Now the restaurants’ own employees can. But the process to do so is tricky.

Colorado liquor attorney Michael Laszlo said the first thing he asks restaurant and bar clients when they want to start delivering is, “‘Do you have insurance for this?’ ”

“If that person gets in a wreck, you’re totally on the hook,” he said of business owners’ responsibility. “I would be very, very wary of doing deliveries where I don’t already have coverage.”

Since the new guidelines were posted April 1 from the Colorado Liquor Enforcement Division, Laszlo said the businesses he talks to “are actively trying to find a way to safely deliver alcohol using any means available. I mean, we have a lot of leeway here (with the new law), and I like it.”

Ryan Fletter, who owns Barolo Grill and Chow Morso Osteria, isn’t sure he will take advantage of the rule.

“It’s not as easy as just saying delivery is now opened and relaxed,” Fletter said. He has checked with his insurance company, which estimated at least $5,000 to open a new delivery policy.

“We’ve never had to do the math before on what it would take to install that program and keep it viable,” Fletter said. “How much delivery service would you do, and would it be worth having that insurance policy and the staff members to do it?” Still, he’s looking into the possibility if it means employing more people.

Since the shutdown started three weeks ago, Fletter has been encouraging customers to drive to his restaurants for curbside pickup.

He employs his former valet drivers as meal runners, wearing masks and gloves to deliver orders from inside the restaurants to customers parked outside in their cars. The process has been “dialed in” even.

“There’s major liability in leaving the premises,” Fletter said. “What if (employees) contract the disease? How do you get into an apartment building? This adds a whole other catastrophic layer of complexity to what was already a catastrophic layer of complexity.”

Adding yet another layer to the mounting complexity is the fact that delivery apps such as DoorDash and Grubhub are charging restaurants up to 30% of the cost of every order.

“Even in normal times, the fees the delivery apps charge … can be crippling,” Helen Rosner wrote this week for The New Yorker. “For restaurants currently facing sharp declines in revenue, these percentages make already unsteady balance sheets even more precarious.”

Fletter says he’s not sure how those delivery apps’ charges compare to paying and insuring his own drivers.

But he does know that adding a third party to the equation worries him because of all the unknown factors, such as how they’re handling the food and how long it takes to be delivered.

“The simplest way to ensure that restaurants are getting as much money as they can, at a time when they desperately need all they can get, is to eliminate the middleman entirely,” Rosner of The New Yorker wrote.

“Just pick up the phone and call the restaurants directly.”

Fletter agrees with sentiment.

“The population (in Denver) has a very healthy fleet of vehicles at their disposal. They’re kind of like little escape pods from your house.”

Meanwhile, parking lots at grocery stores and liquor stores are full, and lines to get into them are down the block, he’s noticed. “I’m suggesting and hoping that people will kind of turn their car now toward the restaurants.”

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