With COVID cases skyrocketing, bars and restaurants dread possible new restrictions
With the summer surge in new COVID cases, restaurant and bar owners are once again on the front lines of enforcing mask and vaccination rules for customers and employees.
Policies vary from one metro-east restaurant to another. Some require all employees and customers to wear face coverings, while others require masks only of those who have not been vaccinated.
No restaurants contacted by the BND have required employees to get vaccinated but said that most of their employees decided to get shots on their own.
In St. Louis, one restaurant took it a step farther and has said it will not serve any customer who has not been vaccinated.
O’Connell’s Pub at 4652 Shaw Ave. had this message on its Facebook page: “If you aren’t vaccinated or don’t plan to be vaccinated, don’t come. Ever.”
Most restaurants haven’t gone quite that far, but many owners endorse vaccines as their best measure to avoid state-mandated restrictions that could be damaging to their businesses.
Dreading possible new restrictions
Illinois business owners have had to deal with indoor dining and drinking bans and capacity restrictions since the pandemic began in March 2020. They suspect a new round of coronavirus restrictions could be headed their way since the number of COVID cases has increased dramatically since June.
Bennie Parr Jr., owner of Bennie’s Pizza Pub at 113 E. Main St. in Belleville, said he is “definitely concerned about mitigations being put in place.”
“Kind of going backward is definitely a tough pill to swallow,” he said.
While some area restaurants and bars defied the previous bans, others adapted to the new rules and believe they might be better prepared if they are imposed again.
Area restaurants have expanded outdoor seating areas and one restaurant in Swansea, Cholula’s Mexican Restaurant at 1500 N. Illinois St., built a drive-thru window earlier this year to complement a new outdoor patio.
Bennie’s Pizza Pub recently took over the former St. Louis Bread Company spot on East Main Street and Parr said the new location allows for more seating outside and distancing tables inside.
Taqueria Z at 109 E. Park St. in Edwardsville also improved its outdoor dining area after some parking places were removed.
Will mask mandate be expanded?
Gov. J.B. Pritzker has ordered schools to impose mask mandates for everyone whether they are vaccinated or not, but he hasn’t announced other restrictions. A spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Public Health, however, said it’s possible the mask mandate could be expanded beyond schools.
“We continue to review the data and the latest scientific information to determine the best ways to protect the people of Illinois, and to prevent our hospitals and health care systems from being overwhelmed,” Melaney Arnold said in an email. “This may include reinstating mask requirements more broadly.
“Communities experiencing outbreaks and surges should work to protect residents by reinstituting proven mitigations, such as widespread use of masks.”
Arnold noted the state’s previous restrictions were in place before COVID vaccines were widely available and she urged everyone to get vaccinated if they have not done so already.
“The best way to prevent the spread of COVID is vaccination,” she said. “Vaccine is widely available and free to everyone.”
Arnold noted that the Illinois Department of Public Health has adopted the latest guidelines from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC now recommends that everyone — including those who have been fully vaccinated — wear a mask while indoors in areas with “high” COVID rates. The metro-east is considered such an area.
The last indoor dining and drinking ban in the metro-east was lifted on Feb. 4. At that time, the region’s hospitals had a seven-day rolling average of 143 COVID patients, down from a high of 233 in November, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.
While the latest average has not reached that early February level, it has increased nearly every day since the third week of June when it bottomed out at 12 COVID patients. It was listed at 127 in the latest statistics available on Monday.
Vaccines and restaurants
Public health officials like Arnold have been urging people all year to get vaccinated.
Metro-east restaurateurs have the same message: They want customers to get vaccinated so the businesses can stay open without restrictions.
Bri Meyer, an employee of Stagger Inn Again at 104 E. Vandalia St. in Edwardsville, said the restaurant and bar has followed all state’s restrictions since the pandemic began.
“Everybody’s taking safety precautions and doing what they can to make sure we can stay open,” she said.
The restaurant did not require employees to get vaccinated, but Meyer said, “Every employee went and got vaccinated as soon as it was available to them.”
The Stagger Inn Again requires employees to wear a mask while working, even though they have all been vaccinated.
“We hope people keep getting vaccinated and keep being safe to keep their community and everyone else safe and we hope the other restaurants are doing the same thing,” Meyer said.
Parr said he received legal advice to not require his employees to be vaccinated because of possible workers’ compensation issues, but he said most of his employees received their shots voluntarily. He asks the employees who have not been vaccinated to wear a mask.
Mike Zanger and Zachary Miller, co-owners of Taqueria Z in Edwardsville, also said they did not require employees to get vaccinated but their employees chose to do it.
Enforcement of restrictions
Owners of bars and restaurants say if new COVID restrictions are put in place, they want the state to fairly enforce them and they want officials to give them time to handle the changes.
Parr asked state officials to “give us a little more time to adjust.”
Lesly Ramirez, the manager of Cholula’s, agreed, adding that she would like public health officials to do a better job of explaining the restrictions if they are once again mandated.
Ramirez, who thinks the state may impose new restrictions, said her restaurant has followed all of the previous mitigations but that she saw other restaurants along Illinois Street not following them. She would like to see the rules fairly enforced.
“The only thing that we didn’t really appreciate last time was like it seemed like smaller businesses had to do all the rule following while you had these big restaurants on this same street all open,” she said. “And that’s something ... that doesn’t help us in the long run either.”
If a new ban on indoor dining and drinking is put back in place, Karla Blades, the owner of a bar in New Athens, said her place would not survive.
The Nail, which derives its name from the initials in New Athens, Illinois, had initially defied a ban on serving customers indoors but it subsequently relented and stopped serving customers inside the bar.
Blades was upset that her business was targeted while other nearby bars remained open last winter.
“There’s no way we could go through another shutdown,” she said.
