By Allison Perrine
SEA BRIGHT – At least 60 restaurant owners in the Two River area stood in front of Woody’s Ocean Grille May 29 with one common goal – to get Gov. Phil Murphy to permit outdoor dining.
And it may have worked.
Local restaurant owners, elected officials and members of the New Jersey Restaurant and Hospitality Association held a press conference that day to urge the governor to immediately permit outdoor dining, highlighting how detrimental the shutdowns have been to eating establishments and other small businesses across the state.
Days later Murphy called for the reopening of outdoor dining effective June 15, a start, but not what the owners hoped for.
Restaurateurs in Sea Bright wanted a June 5 statewide reopening with a firm plan in place for the gradual reopening of indoor seating, allowing 50 percept capacity by June 15. Murphy had not yet put a plan in place for any indoor seating as of press time Wednesday.
“As we move through Stage One of our strategic restart and recovery process, public health data continues to demonstrate our collective success in flattening the curve of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations,” said Murphy in a press release. “It is with these favorable metrics, coupled with expanded testing capacity and contact tracing, that we can responsibly enter Stage Two of our multi-stage approach
to recovery.”
The Press Conference
Chris Wood, owner of Woody’s Ocean Grille said that an estimated 20 percent of independent restaurants “will never reopen again” because of this crisis.
But once area restaurants reopen outdoor seating, they are “prepared to go above and beyond” cleaning protocols.
“Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and even parts of New York, are allowing restaurants to reopen outdoor seating,” Wood said. “We look forward to doing the same in the state of New Jersey – safely, of course.”
He and other speakers at Friday morning’s press conference outlined temporary outdoor seating guidelines that local establishments will follow to prevent the spread of the virus once they reopen outdoor dining. For restaurants with existing approved outdoor seating areas, that includes keeping tables 6 feet apart, limiting tables to eight or fewer patrons and employees using proper personal protective equipment. Personal condiments
and disposable or online menus will also be utilized.
For places permitted to operate in open areas and under temporary tents, tables will be at least 8 feet apart, limited to eight people per table, with tables, chairs and seats cleaned and sanitized after each customer.
And that’s one point chef David Burke highlighted at the press conference – the restaurant business has always been held to a high standard of staying clean and properly sanitized.
“Restaurant workers, in general, are trained to work very clean. The board of health is on us like no other business,” he said, on behalf of the New Jersey Restaurant and Hospitality Association. That includes managers, chefs, bartenders and other employees. “There is a sanitary effort all the time, year-round when we feed people. We’re responsible people.”
While they did not speak at the event, elected officials including Assemblywoman Serena DiMaso, Assemblyman Gerry Scharfenberger and state Sen. Declan O’Scanlon (R-13) stood with restaurant owners that morning.
“We fully support our restaurant owners today in their call for immediate reopening actions,” DiMaso and O’Scanlon said in a joint statement after the event. “The governor has said that we are weeks off from seeing restaurants reopen in some capacity. The problem is that our restaurant owners do not have weeks to wait anymore. There are 350,000 New Jersey restaurant workers on unemployment right now. Every week that we wait is another week that keeps these workers unemployed.”
Similarly, state Sen. Vin Gopal (D-11) issued a press release supporting restaurants reopening. “New Jersey’s restaurant industry has worked hard to promote social distancing in their kitchens, design plans for reopening and find new ways to keep staff and customers safe from COVID-19. As the governor’s recent executive order expanding outdoor gatherings shows, and as broad amounts of medical data have indicated, this virus is far less dangerous when it’s not confined by four walls and a ceiling,” he said. “I strongly believe that we can keep our infection curve flattened by keeping clear social distancing safeguards in place.”
The article originally appeared in the June 4 – 10, 2020 print edition of The Two River Times.
