At a press conference this afternoon, County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher announced that, following a decline in hospitalizations due to COVID-19, which put San Diego back in the “purple tier” per the state’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy, local restaurants will once again be able to offer outdoor service from 5 to 10 p.m. This also applies to the county’s brewpubs as well as tasting rooms, though the latter must, as the County of San Diego’s announcement stated, “operate like a restaurant.” This means those establishments must provide on-site food options for purchase in conjunction with beer and alcoholic-beverage sales.
The easing of regulations had been expected following California Governor Gavin Newsom lifting the state-mandated stay-at-home order earlier in the day. Under the order, which went into effect in early December, hospitality venues, including brewery tasting rooms and brewpubs had been prohibited from offering any dine-in services, indoor or outdoor. While pick-up, delivery and shipping options remained for many such operations, brewery owners were vocal that losing on-site business for a prolonged period of time would spell doom for scores of local small businesses such as theirs.
Faced with the all-too-real possibility of their businesses failing, numerous brewing company owners chose to openly defy the State order, with some going so far as to offer indoor dining, as well. Such behavior has drawn mixed responses from the public, most notably brewery owners who followed the order and suffered the resultant negative impacts to their bottom lines. While local breweries are eager to operate all phases of their business, having outdoor dining back provides some form of relief.
“We are excited that outdoor dining is allowed again, not only for ourselves, but all the restaurants and other breweries that are now able to open as well,” says Matt Zirpolo, co-founder of Burgeon Beer Co. In addition to its flagship tasting room in Carlsbad, his company expanded last fall, opening a second, smaller tasting room in Escondido, seating for which is entirely outdoors, and is in the process of building out a third space in downtown’s Little Italy neighborhood. “At Burgeon, we take this pandemic very seriously and have implemented rigorous cleaning and safety procedures. We hope other establishments do the same so we can all stay safe and stay open.”
Although the state order was lifted, individual county government factions had the authority to impose stricter regulations as they saw fit. During today’s press conference, Fletcher and others stressed the importance of citizens not letting their guards down and continuing to exercise caution to keep the county’s COVID numbers down.
Prior to the conference, Fletcher Tweeted: CA has seen progress slowing the spread of COVID-19 and today the state lifted the regional stay at home order. In SD, we return to the purple tier…Our collective actions to slow the spread have helped, but lets not become complacent. Let’s keep it up.