‘Who wants to eat in an empty restaurant?’ How Miami-Dade plans to reopen in a pandemic
Miami-Dade residents might soon be able to dine out or visit a hotel when local authorities begin an expected gradual lifting of business lockdown orders. But when they go out, they’ll encounter a drastically altered leisure landscape.
Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez said Friday he expects to finalize plans next week for a phased reopening of businesses, including offices and cultural facilities, though he provided no details on timetables or what rules he’s contemplating to limit the further spread of infection from the novel coronavirus.
But draft rules for the reopening of restaurants and hotels obtained by the Miami Herald show that likely regulations will encompass social-distancing practices, widespread use of masks and plexiglass sneeze shields that echo those already being deployed by groceries and drugstores. These, however, will be significantly intensified.
Picture buzzy crowded restaurant dining rooms bored out to make room for social distancing. Tables spaced six feet apart and with masked diners removing their covers only at their tables. Masked and gloved waiters delivering meals. And a protocol to shut down the restaurant in a snap in the case of coronavirus exposure.
“Is that risk down to zero?,” Gimenez said during a Friday Zoom conference. “No. It’s never going to be zero. It’s low enough that we feel that the infection rate will always be below what the capacity of our health system is to deal with it. And that’s our goal.”
The proposed rules, drafted in consultation with more than 40 restaurateurs, hotel operators, business people and doctors from Florida International University, aim to balance commercial interests and a desire to put people back to work while limiting exposure to the virus for workers and customers.
“My job is to make sure when you leave my restaurant, you say, ‘Yes, it was weird. But I felt safe and I would do it again,” said David Martinez, co-owner of Little Havana’s Cafe La Trova with his wife, celebrity chef Michelle Bernstein. “If a customer doesn’t feel safe going out to eat, who cares if we’re open?”
But they also implicitly acknowledge that customers and workers will be at some risk of infection from the novel coronavirus as they congregate in closed or sometimes cramped spaces. The plans include procedures for emergency closures if exposure is detected.
The safety measures are patterned after recommendations by the federal Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization. How the restaurants could abide by the rules — not necessarily the risk to diners and employees — drove the discussions, said Lourdes Gomez, who is Miami-Dade’s deputy director of the Department of Regulatory and Economic Resources and oversaw the many meetings.
“That point never came up in our discussion. We were focused on the operation of the facility,” she said. “We really didn’t get into the risk discussion with the doctors at all.”
Asked whether risk of infection should have guided the process, she said, “I think that’s the question the mayor is having to ask himself when he makes the decision of when to open.”
The proposals are works-in-progress and likely to change before final versions are released. No opening dates have been set.
While the proposed rules would apply across the county for a contemplated first phase of reopening, they’re meant only as a baseline. Cities like Miami, Miami Beach and Coral Gables — which generally moved more quickly to shut down activities than the county — are likely to move at a slower pace to reopen and could institute their own more-restrictive rules on restaurants, hotels and other business operations.
On Friday, Miami Beach commissioners decided against even a partial reopening of the city’s beaches and its economy until sufficient testing and contact-tracing capabilities are available. In Coral Gables, meanwhile, a business-recovery task force that will help guide the city’s economic reopening has only just been named and has yet to meet, a spokeswoman said.
The draft plan to reopen restaurant dining rooms that Gimenez ordered closed on March 17 represents just one chapter in a larger blueprint on how to govern businesses whenever the mayor lifts emergency restrictions that shuttered much of the economy.
During private Zoom meetings, groups of business executives, lobbyists, medical professionals, elected officials, non-profit administrators, worker advocates and others have been mapping out guidelines and mandates for reopening various industries. There’s a group on manufacturing, and one on grooming for hair salons and beauty parlors, and one on museums and theaters, with about a dozen in all.
The draft of the plan for the hotel industry obtained by the Herald allows some visitor amenities to remain.
Gyms would be closed when hotels first resume accepting reservations, but pools could be open. Valet parking is discouraged but not banned. Employees are required to wear personal protective equipment and will be issued masks, and the leader of the hotel association that helped draft the plan said face coverings would be mandatory for guests, too.
Menus must be disposable and elevator buttons sanitized at least once an hour. Limits would be set on how many people can enter the lobby at one time.
“Everybody is thinking of every single move, from the moment you drive up,” said Wendy Kallergis, president of the Greater Miami and the Beaches Hotel Association and a member of Gimenez’s hotels task force. “There’s going to be a lot of warmth and hospitality.”
Still, it’s unclear how Gimenez, who opened parks, marinas and golf courses on Wednesday, would go about deciding when the time is right to begin reopening businesses. His administration is consulting with personnel from the county health department and FIU, and has hired the consulting firm McKinsey to help with its analysis. Gimenez has said he would be guided in part by hospitalization rates for flu-like symptoms.
Gimenez has hewed to a more-deliberate approach as most of the rest of the state gets set to reopen for business under a controversial order by Gov. Ron Desantis, who exempted Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties because of generally higher rates of infection in the region. In other counties, restaurants and retail can begin reopening Monday.
Critics of the Desantis order and reopenings in other states say they will almost inevitably lead to spikes in infection rates in the absence of sufficient testing and adequate detection systems that can raise real-time alarms about hot spots. Those are not yet in place in South Florida, either.
Miami-Dade’s proposed rules for restaurants and hotels lay out requirements for managers, staff and customers to limit the spread of the coronavirus. The rules represent a drastic shift in both operations and guest and dining experiences that’s designed.
But the new requirements would not block all infections in dining rooms or kitchens, meaning customers and workers would remain at some risk of exposure. Some restaurateurs say the restrictions might prove unworkable in tight narrow kitchens, prep spaces and compact dining rooms in many Miami restaurants where crews can’t avoid rubbing shoulders or working in close proximity to one another.
Some say the reduction in dining capacity might mean operating costs could exceed revenue, preventing some restaurants from reopening or risking having to shut down for economic reasons shortly after reopening.
“How is a business going to survive making 30 cents on the dollar?” Martinez said. “Some people will say it’s not worth it to reopen.”
Under the draft county rules, restaurant dining rooms would have to operate at sharply reduced capacity. Unlike rules for the rest of the state, which allow restaurants to use only 25% of their indoor seating capacity, Miami-Dade’s proposed guidelines would allow up to 50% of the interior capacity, provided the restaurant can meet detailed spacing requirements.
Those spacing requirements limit each table to four diners sitting at least three feet apart. Tables must be arranged so that seated customers are a minimum of six feet apart from those at the next table. Where space permits, seating would be limited to four people per 100 square feet.
At Little Havana’s Cafe La Trova, which Esquire named one of the best new spots in the country, that looks like this: The 225-seat restaurant shrinks to 75, said Martinez.
At Joe’s Stone Crab, which opened in 1913, before the 1918 flu pandemic, the dining room has already been laid out according to the proposed rules, owner Stephen Sawitz said. It’s down from more than 400 to fewer than 180 seats.
Sawitz, also a member of Gimenez’s task force, worries that the sight of a vast and mostly empty restaurant will be off-putting to diners.
“Who wants to watch football in an empty stadium or eat in an empty restaurant?” Sawitz said.
Under the proposed rules, servers, managers, bussers and others approaching customers must wear masks and gloves at all times and keep as much distance from the patrons as possible. Diners can remove masks only when seated at tables. Menus must be single-use or on phone apps.
“I’ve pictured it a million times and there’s nothing sexy about it,” Martinez said.
Bar seating would have to be spaced six feet apart and no waiting or congregating would be allowed. Hand sanitizer or wipes would be available at entrances, exits, on tables and in other areas around the restaurant. Touchless trash bins would be required for customers and staff. Restroom occupancy would be limited to one person at a time. Tills and counters would have plexiglass sneeze shields. Buffets are verboten.
Restaurants must assign someone to ensure rules are being followed at all times, and regular announcements must be made reminding workers and customers of restrictions.
Martinez discussed worst-case scenarios with his staff, like if a diner removes his mask.
“Would you tell them something if they took off their shirt? You have to treat it the same way,” Martinez said.
The rules would also require restaurants to upgrade air-conditioning filters to ensure the maximum filtration possible, and encourage installation of high-efficiency systems. UV irradiation would be required in areas too small to properly ventilate.
Still, the detailed rules appear to leave room for infection to occur. A study out of China published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control shows how virus particles were blown across one restaurant in Guanzhou by air conditioning from one infected but asymptomatic patron, infecting nine others sitting at different tables.
The current draft also shows that contemplated rules requiring a temperature scan of restaurant workers before each shift were watered down.The proposed rule now requires only that workers take their own temperatures at home before leaving for work, and report the readings to a supervisor. But medical experts say home readings can be unreliable.
But restaurant managers are free to adopt stricter procedures, and Sawitz said that’s what he plans to do at Joe’s.
Joe’s has purchased its own thermometers and plans to take employees’ temperatures before they start their shifts, he said. He’s encouraging other restaurant owners to do the same.
“I want to make sure they’re healthy,” he said.
Temperature checks only show if someone already has symptoms. As many as half those infected by the novel coronavirus never show symptoms but can spread it, and those who become sick can take up to 14 days to show symptoms, a period during which doctors believe they might be spreading the virus at the highest rate.
Under the proposed rules, managers must also ask employees reporting to work a series of screening questions that include whether they have come into contact with anyone who has tested positive for COVID-19 or exhibited at least two listed symptoms since their last shift. Records of responses must be kept.
In kitchen and prep areas, strict six-foot social distancing is not required, a reflection of the reality that many restaurants operate with cramped back-of-house spaces. But the rules encourage managers to place food-prep workers in staggered work stations so that they’re not directly facing one another, and space those out by an unspecified amount even if it slows the speed of production lines.
“Employees are in even closer spaces, and, really, those are the most vulnerable places to be,” Martinez said.
The subcommittee that helped hone the rules included restaurants large and small, including Carlos Gazitua of Sergio’s Cuban restaurant, Bernstein and Martinez, and Jose Cil, CEO of Restaurant Brands International, which owns Burger King.
The working group was advised by the county health department and a team of five doctors from FIU led by Dr. Aileen Marty.
“We’re going to make this work,” said Sawitz, Joe’s owner. “It’s all we’re thinking about. It’s all we’re talking about.”
The draft rules on hotels recommend that managers staff their front desks only with clerks under the age of 60, given COVID-19 tends to cause more serious health effects for older people.
The rules also ban pets from rooms, citing risk of spread “from and to pets from COVID19.” That’s a risk the Centers for Disease Control website describes as minor, stating: “At this time, there is no evidence that animals play a significant role in spreading the virus that causes COVID-19.” The draft hotel plan also targets stray cats. “Keep felines out of any part of the hotel or hotel grounds,” read the draft, dated April 25.
The rules also call on hotels to “conduct regular temperature” checks for staff and “encourage employees to stay home if they are sick.”
But the plan does not require paid sick leave for workers with COVID-19 symptoms, a benefit requested by the Unite Here labor union, which represents about 3% of the county’s hotel workers.
“If you don’t want employees to come to work sick, you pay them to stay home,” said Wendi Walsh, a Unite Here union executive who serves on Gimenez’s hotels group. “If a worker is symptomatic, send them home with pay until they’re free from symptoms. It’s not complicated.”
At his Friday press conference, Gimenez said he would not mandate workplace benefits when he issues revised orders allowing hotels to start accepting tourists again.
“My executive order will deal with health issues. Not employment issues,” Gimenez said. “Those are personnel decisions between the hotel and their employees.”
This story was originally published May 2, 2020 at 7:00 AM.
