Is it ‘foolish’ to reopen Texas? What to expect if you shop or eat out this weekend
Texas will look radically different on Friday than it did before the novel coronavirus struck, even as Fort Worth restaurateurs and retailers move eagerly to restart the economy.
Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday said restaurants, stores, theaters, museums and libraries could reopen at 25% occupancy if they ensured social distancing. It’s the first step in a three-part plan to reopen the state that he championed as both socially responsible and economically necessary.
Restaurant and store employees across Fort Worth will be wearing masks and patrons are encouraged to do the same. Many owners said they’re reopening out of necessity, with reservations about how the coronavirus will spread.
“It’s not going to look pretty,” said Gayle Hill, operating officer of Maverick Fine Western Wear and the General Store in the Stockyards.
Both stores are installing Plexiglass at checkouts, taping the floor to mark six-foot distances, and requiring employees and shoppers to wear masks. Sales have fallen more than 75%, she said, so the businesses need to reopen to survive.
Fort Worth restaurants are also taking steps to keep customers safe.
Tim Love has been working for about a week to open nine of his restaurants — excluding The White Elephant and Love Shack — and has consulted with the city to develop protocols for restaurants that go beyond social distancing.
Customers will be screened for fevers, he said, and some locations will have disposable bags to store masks. Each of his buildings has been professionally cleaned and staff will be instructed to wash their hands frequently.
In a phone interview, Love sounded enthusiastic but voiced caution.
“We’re excited, but we’re only excited if we can do this safely,” he said. “We’re going to emphatically follow the rules.”
Within two weeks he hopes to have at least 80% of his more than 300 employees back to work in some form. Even as his restaurants ramp back up, Love said he’ll continue the “Bring Love Home” family meal packages, which help fund a community meal program that has fed 10,000 people since the outbreak began.
Healthy Skepticism
Shannon Wynne, the restaurateur behind Flying Saucer, Bird Café, Flying Fish and Rodeo Goat, said he would reluctantly test opening his restaurants, calling the new rule “foolish.” Part of his criticism comes from the expectation his restaurants will lose money at anything below 70% capacity, but he said he’s also worried about unnecessarily spreading the virus.
“Anybody who wants to go out to eat — chances are they’re not going with people they’ve been safely at home with,” he said, adding that many people will want to dine with friends they have not seen in awhile. “That flies in the face of common sense.”
Wynne plans to combine tables so people can sit farther apart, with staff frequently cleaning and counting each person at the door. At the Sundance Square Flying Saucer, the large patio should be able to seat people safely, he said.
Though he’s skeptical of reopening, Wynne said he thinks limited occupancy and extreme distancing will become the new normal.
Mixed bag at Fort Worth restaurants
Jon Bonnell, who served as the de facto spokesman for Fort Worth’s independent culinary scene when restaurants were first told to close dine-in, said those looking to dine out are likely to find a “mixed bag” of available restaurants. Places that kept menus nearly the same will be able to reopen more easily than those that have served pared-down or family options.
This is true at his restaurants.
The two Buffalo Bros, by TCU and downtown, will reopen at a quarter capacity, he said. The move will hopefully help boost revenue and return some employees to work. Of particular concern is several thousand dollars worth of beer in more than 70 kegs that will spoil in a few months, he said.
“It’s hard to run a sports bar on a college campus when there are no sports and no college,” he said.
Bonnell’s Fine Texas Cuisine on Bryant Irvin Road and Waters Restaurant downtown will continue curbside family meals for the foreseeable future, he said. The cost to switch back to fine dining at anything less than 70% capacity would be too expensive to be realistic.
“Changes to our business can’t just be switched back and forth,” he said. “This is going to be a long, slow and gradual shift.”
Judy Quiroz, owner of Bluebonnet Cafe, broke down in tears describing over the phone the rough time she and her husband Carlos have had staying afloat. The Haltom City diner has been closed since St. Patrick’s Day. Before the shutdown, even the busiest day for takeout would see only 10 to 15 meals out the door, she said, so it didn’t seem feasible to stay open.
Quiroz said she recently decided to open on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays for takeout starting this weekend. Without any federal assistance, she said the restaurant was at great financial risk. Then Abbott issued his order. Now Bluebonnet will also open for limited dine-in with the hope of expanding to more days, she said.
Still, Quiroz said she was worried about safety.
“We’ve been doing everything we’re told to do,” she said. “But I know some people out there don’t care and they’re not taking this seriously. You don’t know where they’ve been.”
Tough times for retail
At Yours Truly in downtown owner Tammy Pistillo was ready to begin rebuilding her clientele. The boutique’s sales have fallen by more than 90% since the outbreak, she said. Social media campaigns have helped drum up interest, but without people downtown, little revenue has come in.
“It’s like a ghost town downtown,” she said, though she remained optimistic. “I think it’s good that we’re getting open. That’s a good move for Texas.”
At Cartan’s Shoes on Magnolia, assistant manager Jenna Witchen said she wasn’t sure how the store would reopen. The limited clientele would likely make it easy to stay under the 25% occupancy. But as a traditional shoe shop, where people try on multiple pairs and sales representatives spend a lot of time close to customers, it may be difficult to social distance.
On top of that, most of the store’s customers are 65 or older.
“If our customers weren’t in that dangerous group, we’d feel a lot better about it,” she said.
The store shifted to online sales for the first time when the outbreak started and has been able to make a few sales a day that way, she said. Those sales represented a “tiny, tiny fraction” of regular business.
Not so fast for theaters, museums
Some venues allowed to open will remain closed despite the governor’s new plan.
Concern about safely opening and not spreading the virus to older visitors will keep most of Fort Worth’s museums closed, including the Cultural District’s main attractions and the Stockyards Museum.
Though theaters can open at a quarter occupancy, many chain cinemas are not likely to open soon.
Plano-based Cinemark is looking to reopen mid-summer, according to Deadline, and America’s largest theater chain, AMC, said last week it did not have plans to reopen theaters anywhere.
Austin-based Alamo Drafthouse said in a tweet the training and preparation to reopen safely would be extensive, and the chain had no plans to reopen in Texas.
“This is something we cannot and will not do casually or quickly,” the tweet read.
This story was originally published April 28, 2020 at 6:07 PM.
