It’s nine months into the pandemic, but it feels like we’re right back at square one: Most restaurants across California have once again been forced to shut down all in-person dining. Some restaurant owners aren’t having it.
“To just say do takeout is literally laughable,” said Mourad Lahlou, chef-owner of Mourad and Aziza in San Francisco. “For me, the government has to do what it needs to do to protect people and make sure they stay healthy, but at the same time, think about the businesses, and think about the deeper impact this shutdown is going to have on people long term.”
Lahlou isn’t the only one upset. After the California Restaurant Association filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles County, a judge ruled Tuesday that LA health officials acted "arbitrarily'' and without a proper "risk-benefit" analysis when they banned outdoor dining (although this will not restore outdoor dining anytime soon, as a more sweeping shutdown ordered by the state is now in effect). Celebrity chef Guy Fieri even entered the fray, expressing support for the lawsuit with a tweet that said, “We gotta keep Flavortown open for biz!”
Restaurant workers everywhere are echoing a common sentiment: There is no concrete evidence backing up that outdoor dining spreads COVID-19. And some scientists agree.
“I feel a great deal of anguish for the restaurant owners, and then they weren’t told there’s clear evidence,” said UCSF infectious disease expert Dr. Monica Gandhi. “Can the city, who has a robust contact tracing system, present evidence to justify that move better?”
She pointed to a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that showed eating at restaurants increased the risk of COVID-19, but did not differentiate between outdoor and indoor dining. A study in Chicago also showed dining drove risk, but it didn’t take into account the precautions taken for outdoor dining, either.
“There hasn’t been a study that looks at the impact of outdoor dining … When I think of places where they’re masked, there’s distancing, ventilation and hand hygiene, I don't think those are places that are likely to create spread,” said Gandhi.
Of course, not all restaurants will be following regulations perfectly, and the tendency of people to gather at restaurants with others outside their household is a factor that may drive transmission as well.
“Whether outdoor restaurants are the right thing to target, I couldn’t tell you, but whether it’s going to the beach, or just people who come from different households who are not in the same bubble, who mix together around the dinner table without their masks on, those are where we get those microclusters of transmission,” said Dr. George Rutherford, a professor at UCSF and head of the division of infectious disease and global epidemiology.
And while studies have shown the risk of transmission is much lower outdoors than indoors, “We know there has been outdoor transmission of COVID,” added Rutherford.
Still, Gandhi thinks that local and state governments should have presented evidence to back the outdoor dining ban — and financial support, too.
“I would encourage the state to put out the data that outdoor dining is spreading the virus,” she said. “Because I would think they have it, and it would go a long way in reassuring people … The second thing they keep on wondering about is if this is our last lockdown ... If it was just for four weeks while we are waiting for the federal government to get their act together, could that blow have been softened by some state support for restaurant workers?”
This far into the pandemic, a lot more is at stake for restaurants being forced to close outdoor dining. Federal assistance has run out, restaurant owners have made big investments complying with safety regulations, and takeout isn’t a feasible option for everyone. Nationwide, 10,000 restaurants have closed over the past three months alone.
Patrons dine and have drinks outside the Page Bar on the sidewalk and parklet seating in San Francisco on Oct. 8, 2020. On Dec. 6, San Francisco shut down outdoor dining once again.
Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE“At the end of the day, we’re not going to stay open for takeout long term,” said Lahlou about his restaurants. “By Christmas, we’ll go into hibernation until we open for good … We spent so much f—ing money building the parklet, locating and finding the heaters, finding all this s— we needed for outdoor dining, and pretty much exhausted our savings and our income.”
Lahlou also had to furlough many of his employees, just as the holiday season begins. Nigel Jones, the chef-owner of Kingston 11 in Oakland, also had to reduce his employees’ hours because of the outdoor dining ban, although he still supports the decision overall.
“If we are able to shut down for a month and that gets things under control, I’m down for it,” said Jones. “From a financial perspective I don’t like it … but the key is getting to the other side of this virus.”
On Friday, San Francisco restaurant employees gathered at City Hall to protest the closure of outdoor dining. Meanwhile, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association is encouraging restaurant owners to write letters to city leaders, asking them to provide immediate financial aid to restaurant workers, more financial relief for small businesses, and to provide businesses with more time to comply with future health orders (restaurants in San Francisco were given a two-day notice of the current outdoor dining shutdown).
Despite the outrage in the restaurant community, some scientists, like Rutherford, maintain that “drastic action” is necessary right now because of the rapid transmission of the virus and oversaturation of ICUs. Newsom’s new stay-at-home order, which is triggered when ICU capacity in a region drops below 15%, is already in effect in most of California (although five Bay Area counties opted to shut down on Dec. 6 before hitting that metric).
“It’s an impossible situation. You have to act, and you have to act during Christmas season, when all the retailers need to make their money, and a ton of restaurant business gets done,” Rutherford said. “It’s brutal all around, but so is having 10,000 deaths.”
Gandhi, on the other hand, maintains that a more nuanced approach to the lockdown could have still mitigated risk, without the devastating impact on the restaurant industry.
“I think we can take a more chiseled approach to our recommendations on what should stay shut and what should stay open nine months into the pandemic, as opposed to completely blunt,” she said. “Because nine months later, economic impacts are so great that we are talking about truly some aspects of survival, of people losing their ability to feed their family.”
She also expressed concern that the closure of outdoor dining without clear evidence backing it will drive some people indoors — which is, as we know, a riskier environment.
“On Christmas Day, when people want to do outdoor dining, will they go inside now? We just had a perfect natural experiment in this country with Thanksgiving … Because of that, given that there’s another major upcoming holiday, I would choose to be more nuanced and laser-focused about lockdown to lead to later compliance and less protest.”
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