Restaurant Reservations

Restaurant Reservations are up significantly this week, 5% for the US as a whole and 2.24% in the state of Georgia. This coincides with a decrease of daily cases in the US, as the country continues to quell the virus, these numbers should continue to recover. Currently restaurant reservations are slightly more than 50% of what they were the year prior. Fine dining has been affected significantly more than the rest of the industry, with casual dining and bars recovered up to approximately 70% of what they were last year.

Casual Dining, Fast Food, And Bars

Slight improvements for casual dining and bars this week. Casual dining improved .3% over last week, and bars 1.6%. It appears that these industries have stagnated since July, similar to the airline industry.

Restaurant Reclosures

Big changes in Georgia last week, on August 15th. Governor Kemp announced an executive order that allows counties, cities, and government entities to put in place their own mask requirements. Effective until August 31st, mask order can be imposed wherever a county has reached more than 100 cases per 100,000 people over the past 14 days.

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

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp allows local govts to set mask mandates

11Alive Staff

ATLANTA — Governor Brian Kemp, on Saturday, announced the extension of an order that will now allow local states, cities, counties, and other government entities to impose mask requirements.

The latest order goes into effect on Sunday at 12 a.m. and remains in effect until Aug. 31. In the order, Kemp said that the orders can be imposed wherever a county has reached a “Threshold Requirement” meaning they have more than 100 cases per 100,000 people over the previous 14 day period.

The masking requirement also can’t give rise to penalties, criminal or otherwise, against a private business, establishment, corporation, non-profit corporation, or organization. And the owners, directors, officers, or agents of any of the above are not to be held liable for the failure of customers to comply with mask requirements.

Individual offenders may face a fine of up to $50 but there are several situations where they cannot be cited. Exemptions to the mask rule include people who are eating or drinking, those who have difficulty putting on or removing a mask on their own, those with religious objections to covering their faces, or those with a medical reason for not wearing a mask. Mask wearing can also not be a requirement for entering a polling place.

Brian Kemp defends Georgia Covid record after report | 11alive.com

Jonathan Raymond 

Public CDC figures confirm Georgia has the highest rate of newly reported cases over the last seven days (as of yesterday) in the U.S., at 179.79 new cases per 100,000 people.

The governor contended though that the news media are ignoring the state’s broad downward trend.

“Look I’m fine if you want to put the per capita numbers out there, I look at them every day … but those numbers have dropped 26%, our hospitalizations have dropped. To scare people with one number is not fair to the general public, not giving them the benefit of the doubt to make good decisions based on all the data.”