Restaurant owners are looking at the new provincial framework with cautious optimism.
On Jan. 29, Premier Jason Kenney announced a new framework with clear steps that will use COVID-19 hospitalizations as a benchmark.
Starting Feb. 8, as long as hospitalizations remain below 600 in the province, restaurants, pubs, bars, lounges, and cafes are permitted to reopen for eat-in service.
They are limited to six people per table from the same household, or two close contacts for people living alone.
Contact information must be collected from one person in the dining party, liquor service has to end at 10 p.m., and in-person dining must close by 11 p.m.
Entertainment such as VLTs, pool tables, and live music are still disallowed.
Heartland Cafe and Restaurant proprietor Laszlo Radi has spent the time shut down pivoting his restaurant to serve takeout dishes, but will look forward to welcoming customers back into his dining room.
“We are more like an in-house dining restaurant than takeout,” Radi said.
He added that during the dining room closure, his establishment was able to try different things such as grab-and-go offerings that turned out to be a hit.
"We had lots of positive comments — people love it," Radi added.
These new items will be staying on his menu after the reopening.
The procedures that will be in place at Heartland will be largely similar to before the shutdown, and Radi noted his restaurant had already voluntarily been asking for contact tracing information.
Radi echoed past responses from food establishment owners in saying that he felt restaurants took the brunt of the restrictions and said he thinks that dining at his restaurant was safe.
A concern to him is the onus placed on the restaurant for enforcing that each dining party be from the same household.
“I will be obeying the rules, and we should listen to the government, but the rule that only people from the same household can visit a restaurant — if it's not enforced, like any other rules, there’s no point,” Radi said.
Radi’s major concern is that if the hospitalizations go above 600 again, they have to close their dining room again and are out the cost of restarting.
“If it's going to go over a certain number of the hospitalization, then we're going to close down again,” Radi said.
When the new restrictions came about in December, Radi lost over 75 per cent of his reservations for that month, a large hit to his business.
Michelle Traxel, co-owner of Little Fast + Fresh, echoed the concern over the risk placed on small businesses.
Her restaurant, which she operates with her husband Jarod, will be sticking to take-out for the time being, and have pivoted to larger dinner kits.
“I know I'm really sick of making dinner, and so is everyone else,” Traxel said. “So we tried to come up with some five minute dinner options.”
She added that she’s looking forward to adding some patio tables in front of the restaurant once weather and restrictions allow.
One worry Traxel has for her and her fellow small business owners is the cost of restarting might leave businesses with even less cash reserves to weather another wave of enhanced restrictions or a shutdown.
“I think it just leaves too many unknowns for myself and a lot of my peers in the restaurant community,” Traxel said. “And it's very nerve-wracking.”
“What happens if all of a sudden we see a bump in cases and we hit 700 hospitalizations?”
Traxel is hopeful that cases and hospitalizations will come down, and hopes Albertans will be careful not to cause another spike in cases.
“I want to see life mostly return back to normal. I don’t want to see a huge spike and us have to go into a shutdown again," she said.
