Restaurant Reservations

Restaurant Reservations remain on the rise, with the country touting a nearly 1% increase over last week, and Georgia recovering slightly faster at a 1.7% daily average increase. As daily new cases continue to level out in the USA, expect to see a sharper increase for both fine dining restaurants and every other type of eating establishment.

Casual Dining, Fast Food, and Bars in the Southeast

The daily average for casual dining foot traffic rose by 1.6% this week, bars are recovering a bit slower with only a .8% increase for the week. This places casual dining at 69% of the foot traffic pre-COVID-19, and bars at 71% of foot traffic pre-COVID-19. It seems that with the COVID-19 daily cases leveling out instead of increasing as it has done for the past 5 weeks, we are starting to see these businesses slowly recover again.

Fast food remains unaffected by the pandemic as of this time.

Restaurant Reclosures

Restaurants and bars are being re-closed after a spike in COVID-19 cases. This is a comprehensive list of states that have re-closed or restricted their restaurants as of July 28th. To see details about how the states are re-restricting their restaurants, click this link to see the full article by Elazar Sontag.

• Idaho
• Florida
• Arizona
• Texas
• Colorado
• Michigan
• Pennsylvania
• Tennessee
• Nevada
• California
• Louisiana
• Maryland
• Illinois
• Kentucky

There have been no new closures this week.

In the News

Must restaurants comply with Gov. Kemp’s executive order?

Taelore Hicks

Kemp’s August 1 order says restaurants and dining services that remain open must limit workers’ and customers’ exposure to COVID-19. The order sets guidelines for doing that, such as reducing their capacity and spreading out tables.

Michael Hokanson with the North Central Health District says points will not be deducted from the inspection score if the restaurant is not abding by the order.

“Kemp’s orders for restaurants, bars, and places that we would regulate fall outside of the Georgia food code, so if a restaurant or another food service provider is not following those specific measures, they don’t get points taken off during their regular, general inspections,” Hokanson said.

Mask Enforcement Puts New Burden on Restaurant Workers

Ramon Galindo 

The challenge of running a small business has greatly increased during the coronavirus pandemic and among those challenges is making sure customers wear facial coverings.

“You’re coming into our home, and we’re trying to make you comfortable, so having to tell somebody you can’t come in ’cause you don’t have a mask, all that stuff can get really exhausting,” said Marie Brawn, owner of Homestead Solana Beach.