RESTAURATEURS PLAY WAITING GAME
Slow going: Eateries limited to outdoor seating and takeout attempting to revive indoor service
Bay Area restaurant owners are hopeful that as more people are vaccinated and social distancing restrictions ease, diners will be lured back to indoor tables at pre-pandemic rates. But the pace of dine-in reservations suggests the region’s food scene has a long way to go before it fully recovers.
Reservations and walk-ins were still down an average of 73% in San Francisco from April 6 through Monday compared to the same time period in 2019, according to data from OpenTable. That’s tied with New York for the biggest decline in the U.S. among 46 cities measured by the company.
Meanwhile, cities and states that moved much more quickly to remove COVID-19-related restrictions have seen booming reservations. In the beach city of Naples, Florida, business is up an average of 29% from the same time in 2019, the biggest increase in the country. Restaurants in Miami, Las Vegas, Scottsdale, Arizona, and San Antonio, Texas, also are doing better than they were before the pandemic hit.
In California, reservations and walk-ins are down an average of 51% in Los Angeles and 18% in San Diego, according to OpenTable’s data. California as a whole is down 24%. Of the seven states where restaurants are doing better now than in spring 2019, Nevada leads the way with business up 23%, followed by Florida, Utah, Rhode Island, Arizona and Texas.
In the Bay Area, with the nation’s first shelter-in-place order and large numbers of residents who have embraced health orders, restaurant owners say they’ve been able to make do thanks to takeout orders and outdoor seating that wouldn’t be as popular in places with harsher weather. Indoor dining has been allowed throughout
the Bay Area at 50% capacity, starting in mid March with San Mateo County.
The 1100 Group, which owns several pizza shops in the Bay Area, including The Star in Oakland and
Little Star Pizza in San Francisco, has in-house construction staff that can build out a parklet in about a week, according to Director of Business Operations Shannon Orr. There’s no shortage of outdoor customers, but people are somewhat reluctant to eat inside.
“Our patios at every shop are for sure full. That isn’t
an issue,” she said. “People are wanting to dine, but they’re wanting to dine (outside).”
The group’s San Francisco location only had 40 seats indoors, so it’s always relied on a robust takeout service, Orr said.
Dan McCranie, owner of the fine dining restaurant Ladera Grill in Morgan Hill,
said even with just 60 outdoor seats — compared to 140 inside — he’s been able to do as much as 70% of his normal business since last summer. He estimates he’s currently at about 75% of spring 2019’s business, with outdoor seating and now 50% indoor capacity.
“Folks are ready to come back,” McCranie said. “I think people miss the social
atmosphere; the whole social experience.”
He’s not quite sure yet how people will react to expanded indoor seating. Even now, he admitted, “it’s a science project sitting people indoors,” because it means navigating complex and quickly changing rules such as how many households can sit together, how far apart tables have to
be, and when people have to use masks.
McCranie said he’s bullish on the rest of 2021 and has managed to find one silver lining for his business in 2020: His taxes were a lot easier to file.
“I don’t ever want to have another year in this restaurant like last year,” he said.