New York Restaurants Brace for Next Wave of Restrictions

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has set new restrictions on bar, restaurant and gym operations in the state as Covid inflections threaten to mount. These businesses are now required to close from 10PM to 5AM for in-person service. These restrictions include any property with a State Liquor Authority license, and it will go into effect on Friday, November 13.

Governor Cuomo also issued new limitations on private indoor and outdoor gatherings to 10 people.

“If you look at where the cases are coming from, if you do the contact tracing, you’ll see they’re coming from three main areas: establishments where alcohol is served, gyms, and indoor gatherings at private homes,” Governor Cuomo said in a statement. “The reason we have been successful in reducing the spread in New York is we have been a step ahead of COVID. You know where it’s going; stop it before it gets there.”

While this move supports the Governor’s plan to increase economic activity while watching the positivity rate and pulling back when that rate begins to creep up, it will certainly impact bars and restaurants, which are continuing to recover from months of mandated business closures. An earlier report from the New York State Restaurant Association found that 63.6% of New York restaurants would shutter by the end of the year without additional government support—and so far, that hasn’t come. The organization also found that 89.7% of restaurant owners said that they would not be profitable through the end of the year due to the pandemic.

The NYSRA asked restaurant owners what they needed do to survive, and the top three answers were for the government to provide commercial rent relief, insist that business interruption insurance claims are paid and increase the capacity for indoor dining. That final request is now being restricted with the governor’s new restrictions.

While the restrictions are sure to impact restaurant revenue at a time when restaurants are already suffering crushing revenue losses, they also have the potential to significantly reduce the COVID-19 infection rate. A study from the journal Nature and reported by the New York Times shows that 8 in 10 new infections of COVID-19 during the early months of the pandemic were linked to indoor dining. The study looked at a wide range of major metros, including Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington D.C., and used cell phone mobility data from March through May. This problem was more severe in lower income communities, where restaurants tend to serve more people per square foot than in higher income communities. The research recommended partial restrictions to solve the problem. For example, limiting occupancy to 20% capacity would reduce infections by 80% while allowing restaurants to retain 60% of customers.