BREAKING: Friday reopening for restaurants, hair care, pools
Many of the industries most devastated by the economic shutdown prepare to spring back to life — but how soon will customers return?
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Gov. Cooper clears N.C. for scaled-back ‘Phase 2’ Friday at 5 p.m.; bars and gyms still closed
-Restaurants allowed to have inside seating, with precautions
-Barbershops, hair and nail salons, pools, massage parlors allowed to open at reduced capacity
-In a surprise, gyms, yoga studios, bars and movie theaters will remain closed for now. They could stay closed another 5 weeks.
-Vulnerable populations encouraged to stay home
-Gatherings still capped at 10 inside but raised to 25 outside
by Tony Mecia
North Carolina’s restaurants and hair care businesses can fully reopen as soon as Friday at 5 p.m.
But in a bit of a surprise, Gov. Roy Cooper on Wednesday declined to allow gyms, bars and entertainment venues to reopen, citing an increase in confirmed coronavirus cases that he said needs to be watched. Earlier plans for the state’s “Phase 2” called for opening those businesses. He called it a “cautious move” and said those businesses could be closed for an additional five weeks.
Cooper’s new order allows restaurants, hair and nail salons, barbershops and swimming pools to open again, but under capacity limits and with safety precautions.
“Today, we are announcing another gradual and cautious step while still keeping important health and safety measures in place,” Cooper said. He said the virus “is still a serious threat to our state” and that “just because you can go more places doesn’t mean you always should.”
On keeping gyms and bars closed, he said: “Many of these places that are indoors, people are close to each other and touching items, [and] that spread of the virus can occur.”
Keeping those businesses shut, for perhaps five weeks or longer, will surely aggravate the owners of those businesses, many of whom have gone without revenue for two months and had believed that they were going to be allowed to open on Friday, too. Such businesses are open in neighboring states.
Breweries still closed? The text of Cooper’s executive order suggests that some of Charlotte’s breweries must also remain closed. The order keeps bars closed. A bar, the order says, is an establishment that is not a restaurant and that is “principally engaged in the business of selling alcoholic beverages for onsite consumption.” Some Charlotte nightlife spots that people think of as bars are actually restaurants if they serve food. Many breweries do not serve food but rely on food trucks to keep drinkers fed.
Outdoor gatherings are now allowed to have up to 25 people. Indoor gatherings are still capped at 10.
Read Cooper’s new executive order.
Economic boost: The authorization to restart restaurants should help return to life one the economic sectors most damaged by coronavirus shutdown: the hospitality industry. An analysis of jobless claims found that 14,300 Mecklenburg leisure and hospitality workers filed for unemployment insurance in March, more than twice as many as any other sector.
Beyond that, the reopenings of restaurants and personal-care retailers could be an important step toward a resumption of more normal life, the benefits of which could ripple to other industries. The nation’s economy hinges to a large degree on the nation’s collective psyche: The economy tends to thrive when consumers are confident in the future and are willing to spend money. It suffers when people are fearful and restrict their spending.
Of course, that sense of heading toward normal depends on keeping the coronavirus under control as the economy reopens. States such as Georgia that have reopened a few weeks ahead of North Carolina have generally not experienced a spike in cases. In North Carolina, 702 people with Covid-19 have died. The number of new daily cases has been rising as testing increases, but the number of new deaths has been slowing and hospitalization numbers have been stable.
Restaurants feeling the pinch: Most Charlotte restaurants have shifted to curbside service, but the closure of dining rooms has meant that restaurants lose out on huge portions of revenue. And they generally can’t sell alcoholic beverages, which can be a huge source of money.
Those restrictions will end on Friday. But that won’t mean the end of economic pain for restaurants. New social distancing restrictions will limit the number of customers to 50% of capacity, which will limit revenues even as many costs such as rent and equipment will remain.
In addition, it’s an open question how many people are so tired of homemade spaghetti and meatballs that they are willing to head out to eat on day 1.
Ready to party: There are clearly people eager to return to going out. When the Wisconsin Supreme Court threw out the state’s stay-at-home order last week, bars quickly filled, and 14 of the top 15 Google searches relating to the word “open” were connected to bars, the Milwaukee paper reported. And that’s in the home of Miller and Schlitz.
Will South End immediately start hopping? Two of The Ledger’s millennial South End sources seem to think so, though the continued restrictions on bars could limit possibilities. Both sense pent-up demand that will lead to crowds. “The itch to get out to the bars is there,” one said. “People are expecting a ton of lines from everyone trying to get into places,” especially those with outdoor areas. The other replied with a DM of an image from the movie “Field of Dreams” with one of that movie’s famous lines: “People will come, Ray.”
Bars will remain closed under Cooper’s order, announced Wednesday, but restaurants are cleared to reopen Friday. (Photo at Sugar Creek Brewing in Charlotte’s so-called “LoSo” neighborhood in August 2019.)
Not ready to party: But another segment of people say they still plan to remain cautious. A recent survey by the marketing firm Mower found that only 22% of respondents said they would be willing to go out to bars and restaurants on the first day possible. Only half said they would be ready by Day 30.
Results are expected to be mixed: Some restaurants will open as soon as possible. Others will wait and see. And some might not reopen until capacity limits are raised, which could be weeks.
5 o’clock somewhere: On social media, some Charlotte venues said they were already gearing up to get back to business:
Getting it right: Others have said they are spending the time to make sure their locations are safe, and they’d like to see other places open first and learn from them.
People heading to restaurants in the coming weeks are likely to see some changes, such as:
Tables and barstools spaced at least six feet apart
Disposable menus
Single-serve condiments
Regular cleaning of doorknobs
Servers wearing masks and gloves (which is not required)
Makeshift outdoor seating
Personal care: Prepare to wait? Companies offering personal care such as haircuts, massages and pedicures will also be able to open, and they could be popular. The Ledger reported this month on the apparent increase in Charlotte of black-market haircuts. When South Carolina allowed hair care places to reopen on Monday, there were waits of at least three hours at three Great Clips locations near the N.C. border:
Backed by data: Cooper and Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mandy Cohen said the decision to reopen many of the businesses was based on science and data. Figures have been showing an increase in the number of new daily confirmed cases in North Carolina, one of only eight states to experience such a recent increase, according to an analysis by the New York Times. But state officials had said that the increase in cases was expected because of big increases in testing.
Still, Cohen and Cooper said they were worried by the increase in cases and wanted to err on the side of caution.
Here is the state’s chart on new daily cases:
Other measures of the disease statewide are more encouraging. The number of hospitalizations, listed at 554 as of Wednesday, has stayed mostly flat for the last month, though it hit a new high this week. And the percentage of positive tests has also stayed flat or even declined slightly in the last couple weeks.
The state provides a comprehensive overview of the data on its Covid-19 North Carolina Dashboard.
Next steps
Cooper said Wednesday that the new order will be in effect for five weeks. That will give ample time for health officials to examine the data and determine if additional openings are warranted.
“We are in a good place by making a cautious move here,” he said. “We want to look at this timeline and look at our numbers over five weeks.”
Cooper’s order announced Wednesday runs through June 26.
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