Should restaurants become vaccine cops?
Backlash feared in bid to protect workers, customers
Bay Area restaurants are seeing reservations drop, with diners citing the highly contagious delta variant as their reason for canceling. Fully vaccinated employees are getting sick, forcing temporary closures at a rate that hasn’t been seen since early in the pandemic. Now, owners are debating what to do next.
A growing number of restaurants and bars have become vaccinationonly establishments, requiring diners to flash their vaccine cards upon entry. But others say it’s not so easy due to logistics and potential customer backlash. Instead, they’re contemplating alternative measures like shutting down their indoor dining rooms, requiring double masks for staff or simply waiting to see how the new vaccine requirements play out at other businesses.
Owners already requiring proof of vaccination say it’s an effort to get somewhat out
ahead of the delta variant since there’s still no official guidance from government agencies beyond a mask recommendation. Mayor London Breed said her office doesn’t have immediate plans to mandate that businesses require patrons to show proof of vaccination but is exploring “all options.” The Golden Gate Restaurant Association, the city’s restaurant industry group, is surveying members on the issue.
Vaccinated people can still get sick from COVID19, though they’re unlikely to get seriously ill, and health officials have long said that indoor dining is a major way the virus spreads. Unvaccinated people remain at significant risk. San Francisco’s sevenday average positivity rate for the coronavirus is now 3.6%, compared with 0.48% in June during California’s reopening.
“The whole idea is to keep our staff, who is completely vaccinated, safe and to keep people coming in safe,” said Marc Zimmerman, owner of San Francisco’s Gozu. The highend restaurant started requiring proof of vaccination on Wednesday. “If we can get ahead and do a little selfpolicing — I’d hate to think about a shutdown at this point, but who knows?”
Restaurants are already feeling the financial hit of cautious diners canceling reservations. At Gozu, reservations were down by 60% this week compared with last week. On a normal Friday night, the restaurant draws about 50 reservations, but this week has just 10. Zimmerman said diners who canceled by phone specifically said it was because of the delta variant.
Meanwhile, the noshow rate Wednesday at San Francisco Peruvian destination La Mar was almost 20%, abnormally high. At Oakland hot spot Sister, reservations were down by about 30% that day.
Earlier this week, Matt Reagan, coowner of Oakland restaurants Palmetto and The KonTiki, likened the vibe to March 2020. “You can see the storm is coming and no one has the courage to sound the alarm,” said Reagan, who instituted a vaccine policy in the hope of showing that his restaurants were taking the pandemic seriously.
Yet many owners of casual restaurants aren’t ready to take this step due to walkin customers, who tend not to look at a business’ website or Instagram before arriving. Unlike bars, these restaurants don’t have a builtin way to check IDs at the door. Those wouldbe diners could be fully vaccinated, but what happens when they don’t have their vaccine card? Is a struggling restaurant, in debt because of the pandemic, really going to send them away?
Thomas Medl, director of operations for Peruvian spots La Mar and Jaranita, feels torn because of these logistical questions. He said he’s not confident that checking vaccine cards would go smoothly — La Mar is a big, busy restaurant that typically cycles through 400 diners per night. He worries about people who don’t carry proof with them or having to screen for potentially fraudulent cards.
“Is it fake? Is it real? Are people honest? I don’t know,” he said. “Right now, it’s a touchy thing to do.”
He also isn’t sure what to do about his two employees — out of a staff of 120 — who aren’t vaccinated because of religious beliefs. If he requires all diners to be vaccinated, those diners would expect the whole staff to be vaccinated, too.
“What do you do with those guys? Say they can’t come to work? It’s a little bit of a doubleedged sword,” he said.
Fear of backlash from customers is a significant factor for Mina Makram, owner of glutenfree favorite Misfits Bakehouse in Palo Alto. He said he’s seen a stark rise in unusually confrontational customers in recent weeks. For example, a customer brought a scale to the bakery to weigh a loaf of bread and called the police because the loaf was 2.89 pounds instead of its advertised 3 pounds, according to Makram.
“I would not put my team in such a situation where you could be asking the wrong person for vaccine proof and, boom, it turns into an explosion,” he said.
Others don’t want to ban people who still can’t get vaccinated, such as children. Outer Richmond spot Cassava, which has been one of San Francisco’s most openly cautious restaurants and isn’t open for indoor dining yet, isn’t planning to ask for proof in part due to that element and because of the logistical challenges for a neighborhood restaurant.
Still, concerns are high regarding the delta variant. Restaurants such as historic Italian restaurant Tosca in San Francisco, Oakland cocktail bar Friends and Family, hip natural wine spot Snail Bar in Oakland, San Francisco popup Bernal Bakery and Alameda pub the Rake have recently closed temporarily due to exposure to the virus.
Cassava’s owner, Yuka Ioroi, is considering mandating employees wear double face masks when the restaurant opens indoors next month. Sister in Oakland, meanwhile, is taking the dramatic step of stopping indoor dining. The move comes after a fully vaccinated employee tested positive for the coronavirus last week, prompting the restaurant to temporarily shut down so the whole staff could get tested.
When Sister reopened a few days later and uncertainty about the delta variant continued to swirl, coowner Richard Clark decided closing off the interior was the safest option. The restaurant is fortunate to have a parklet and back patio, but the interior still provided about a third of its total seating.
“There’s going to be a dip in revenue,” Clark said. “But even if we were open indoors, just the fact that it’s going around again, I’m sure people are hesitant to dine out.”
Some suspect that restaurants switching to vaccinationonly could actually see a boost in business. Stanford infectious disease expert Robert Siegel thinks restaurants could be a key to bumping up vaccination rates, and that he and other cautious diners would be more likely to visit restaurants that take this step. Susan Schaps, a Palo Alto resident with a compromised immune system, has been avoiding indoor dining and would welcome policies on showing proof of vaccination.
“I’d certainly love restaurants to require people to be vaccinated and then I’d feel more comfortable dining inside there,” she said. “The more cautious they seem, the more likely I am to go there.”
Despite the challenges, for some chefs, the answer is clear on what to do as more restaurants close temporarily due to positive coronavirus cases. Andrew Greene has decided he will institute a policy around seating only vaccinated diners at his popup Abstract Table in Berkeley if virus cases continue to climb — even though he serves exclusively outdoors and would have to make sure the popup’s host business is on board as well.
“Everyone is hurting in the hospitality industry,” Greene said. “It’s hard to turn down money. But is your health worth more than money?”