Restaurant owners hoping for less fireworks next week
Eateries lament ‘double whammy’
Owners and workers at Allegheny County bars and restaurants this week are hurting from a new symptom of COVID-19: whiplash.
Many of them gradually reopened to some dine-in/ drink-in service in the green phase of the state’s plan, but a spike in cases here — many attributed to customers who’d crowded into bars — caused county officials to ban serving drinks at establishments for an indefinite period starting on Sunday. Then, on Thursday, as case counts continued to climb, county officials banned establishments from serving food on site for the next seven days.
“A double whammy in one week!” said Else Franzmann, who was glad she’d already closed her Someone Else’s Bar in Castle Shannon for this long weekend to rest up from hustling with takeout and half-capacity in-house dining since the first week of June. She plans to reopen Wednesday, back to just takeout for now and sending her signature candy as well as sangria out the door in plastic containers. “This stuff has made me so stressed out!”
Everyone gets that in the hospitality industry here. On Thursday, the same day bar and restaurant owners protested the alcohol ban in front of the Allegheny County Courthouse, a group of six representatives of various members of the Pennsylvania Restaurant & Lodging Association — small independent, corporate, multiunit hotels — met with county Executive Rich Fitzgerald and others. The group included Glenn Hawley, who owns and operates Napa Prime Chophouse and Off the Hook in Marshall.
The idea, Mr. Hawley said Friday, was to seek firmer ground on safely serving alcohol for when restaurants are allowed to and choose to step back onto the field — “so everybody understands exactly what the rules are.”
He said he and others are recommending stiff penalties for operators who ignore rules such as requiring masks for employees and customers and proper social distancing. However those rules are enforced — by the county or by state Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement or some other way — he said, “It could and probably should include a closure of the violator” for some period. “It has to start with dealing identifiable, enforceable penalties.”
Many of the establishments he’s heard from this week say they were very carefully following all the rules. “That’s why everybody is so upset.”
So much so that some establishments opted to completely close for now. For his part, he temporarily closed the Chophouse but kept Off the Hook open for takeout Friday, something he’ll take a look at over the weekend before reopening for takeout on Wednesday. There are other factors to consider, such as the fact that restaurants and bars just over the county’s borders are open. “Now we are an island.”
He said he’s hopeful Thursday’s meeting will help prevent future whiplash on the alcohol issue. “We cannot go through this again.”
That meeting happened before the county Health Department ordered the weeklong ban on dining in. “It caught us off guard,” said PRLA President & CEO John Longstreet. But he’s confident the county will work with the PRLA, the way Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration has been on a statewide basis, on safe operating procedures for bars and restaurants.
Bottleneck Management Restaurant Group waited until June 24 to open its City Works Restaurant & Pour House on Market Square, which typically sells a lot of alcohol. With the news that alcohol only could be sold togo, the place created five alcohol-free “mocktails” to serve to dine-in guests, as a temporary stopgap, and staffers learned how to make them as they trained on other aspects of a new menu as well as new protocols to keep them and customers safe. Chief Operating Officer Mark Gray drove down from Chicago to help and support them.
Then, on Thursday night, just before the new drinks and menu were to launch, an employee showed Mr. Gray the news on a phone about no dining in for a week.
So the restaurant pivoted and is pushing on with takeout. “If it’s only a week, we’ll muscle through it,” said Mr. Gray on Friday as he drove back to Chicago. If the dinein ban lasts longer than that, he’s worried. Whatever happens, “It’s hard on your staff,” especially those who are brought back to work only to be almost immediately laid off. For now, he said, they’re keeping on the Pittsburgh staff, which he praised for their hard work and dedication, especially given all the ambiguity.
He says they were providing a safe experience before, and he believes it’s possible if establishments follow rules that are enforced. “We’re playing the long game, too,” he said, doing whatever needs to be done to mitigate the risks and spread of COVID-19. “Nobody wants this to be over more than folks in the restaurant business.”