(Headline USA) Indoor dining at New York City restaurants will be banned again under the guise of slowing the spread of the virus.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s announcement on Friday could foretell a grim winter for one of the city’s most important industries.
As of Monday, only takeout orders and outdoor dining will be allowed in the city, one of the world’s great cuisine capitals, the governor said at a news conference in Albany.
The Democrat had been hinting at a clampdown on indoor dining for a week, saying he was waiting to see if hospitalization rates went down. Nearly 1,700 patients are now hospitalized in the city with COVID-19 infections, a normal level for this time of the year.
Cuomo said that despite the economic pain to the city’s roughly 24,000 restaurants and their legions of workers, he needed to act.
“In New York City, you put the CDC caution on indoor dining together with the rate of transmission and the density and the crowding, that is a bad situation,” he said, adding that the shutdown will be evaluated again after two weeks.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he supported Cuomo’s decision.
“This is painful. So many restaurants are struggling. But we can’t allow this virus to reassert itself in our city,” the Democratic mayor said on Twitter.
At ilili, a spacious Lebanese-Mediterranean restaurant in Manhattan, owner Philippe Massoud said the indoor dining shutdown will likely shrink revenue from 8% to 15% of normal in the best-case scenario.
“It’s going to be very, very difficult,” said Massoud, who’s originally from Lebanon. “I lived through 14 years of civil war, so it’s going to take a lot to extinguish me. But this is very trying.”
The restaurant is attempting to make up for lost business by venturing into selling meal kits and retail food items, such as cheese and flatbreads.
But Massoud worried that another shutdown may make New York City untenable for restaurant workers who are suffering financially, and for customers questioning whether the Big Apple is worth it.
“If you can’t eat out in the city and you can’t have a semblance of life, why are you going to be in the city?” he wonders. “When social life and dining-out life is extinguished in the city, it’s no longer a city.”
The governor’s order came despite opposition from the beleaguered restaurant industry, which warned of holiday season layoffs at a time when the federal government has yet to pass additional COVID-19 relief.
The order is a “huge blow,” said Melissa Fleischut, president and CEO of the New York State Restaurant Association.
“This action will inevitably result in massive layoffs and vast closures right before the holidays,” she said in a statement, adding that is was “unfair and devastating.”
“It will be the last straw for countless more restaurants and jobs,” said Andrew Rigie, executive director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance. “The restrictions begin on Monday with zero economic support for small businesses that are already struggling to survive.”
Cuomo acknowledged the hardship restaurants were facing, but said, “It’s in everyone’s interest to get the virus under control, don’t overwhelm the hospitals, don’t overwhelm the positivity rate.”
“If we don’t slow the spread and we overwhelm the hospital system — we get to a red zone… then every restaurant goes to zero indoor, outdoor zero. That’s the worst-case scenario,” he added.
The coronavirus did not overwhelm New York City’s hospitals last winter, and there is no evidence to suggest that it will this winter.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press.
