In Week Two of the Big Reopen, Half-Empty Bar Feels Like a Win

(Bloomberg) --

Ordinarily, a half-empty restaurant would be a distressing sight for John Metz Jr., co-owner of the Marlow’s Tavern chain in Atlanta. Right now, it feels like a hopeful sign.

Metz was one of the first restaurateurs to reopen in Georgia, which is among the states leading America out of Covid-19 lockdown. It’s been almost two weeks now, and while the scene still looks unfamiliar — greeters wearing masks, booths surrounded by plexiglass on three sides — the customers are trickling back in.

That’s encouraging for Metz — and, he reckons, for other restaurants across the country amid dire predictions that many may shut for good.

The pandemic brought the U.S. economy to an unprecedented, sudden stop — throwing more than 20 million people out of work in just a month. There’s now an intense spotlight on states like Georgia, which are moving early to ease stay-at-home restrictions. The question is how quickly diners and shoppers will resume old habits — and whether it will prove safe to do so.

That’s a big political fight, in Georgia and beyond. Governor Brian Kemp triggered a backlash by announcing the late April reopening, with even President Donald Trump — who backs a quick return to business as usual — suggesting it was premature.

Some of Metz’s peers in the Georgia restaurant industry took out a newspaper ad calling for a delay.

Metz says he’d be “just devastated” if a customer got sick. “But I’m confident in my staff, that they’re following all the right steps.”

Those include the kind of measures that are becoming a restaurant-industry norm worldwide — though plenty of Americans haven't gotten the chance to witness them yet.

At the Marlow’s branch in the affluent Atlanta suburb of Johns Creek one afternoon this week, servers wearing masks place a slip of paper on each table. It contains a QR code, which patrons can zap with their smart phones to pull up a menu featuring beef tenderloin salad and the Southern staple shrimp and grits.

One server, gesturing with her hands as if pushing away, awkwardly explains to a customer why she was standing three feet away from the booth.

Meanwhile at the bar, two men are talking about the struggles of local hospitals. They’re not wearing masks, but not sitting too close to each other either. One of them, 67-year-old Bobby Spann, says he’s already been gently rebuked by a Marlow’s employee for failing to observe the six-foot social distancing standard.

“I was standing right there, and she said, ‘Bobby, you need to move,’” he says.

And that helped convince Spann — who has heart and lung conditions putting him in an at-risk group, and is determined to avoid crowds — that he’ll be OK at Marlow’s. “I’m not going to be on the beach and be around a thousand damned kids,” he says. “If I get this, I’m dead.”

No one’s really clear, though, how safe it is for people like Spann, here or elsewhere.

Georgia’s Covid-19 death rate has been slowing, but it’s still not expected to peak (at about 61 deaths per day) until the end of May, according to one prominent model developed at the University of Washington. And changes in public rules or behavior can alter the patterns of transmission.

That’s one reason why Americans may prefer to stay home even when they no longer have to.

As of Thursday, the number of dine-in customers at Georgia restaurants was still down 94% from a year earlier, according to an index based on data from online booking service OpenTable. That’s better than the 100% drop registered a couple of weeks earlier, but it still shows the mountain ahead for the industry to climb.

Still, Metz — after taking part in countless industry discussions — reckons that by the end of next week, half of the state’s restaurants will have reopened. Even if they’re not saying it publicly, “they’re coming.”

Under the new Georgia rules, Marlow’s and other restaurants are limited to 10 customers per 500 square feet. Metz says he’s also added filtration systems to each air-conditioning unit. The refit has cost between $5,000 and $10,000 per outlet.

The gradual return of customers over the past week and a half has been encouraging, with occupancy approaching 50% some nights, Metz says. Still, “we need to get to 50% just to get to break-even. And we can’t survive at break-even.”

Sitting at the Marlow’s bar, Lizette Hatcher — who considers herself especially at risk of the virus because of an autoimmune disorder — says she can see both sides of America’s great lockdown-reopening debate. “I understand everyone’s really nervous right now. But kick-starting the economy’s really important.”

As for herself and the friend she’s enjoying a drink with, Hatcher says, “we are so happy to be out of the house right now.”

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.