Indoor Dining Will Shut Down in New York City Again [View all]

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: New York Times




Indoor dining will once again be barred in New York City restaurants starting on Monday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Friday, a significant reversal of the city’s reopening that comes as officials try to halt the escalation of a second wave of the coronavirus. The decision, which Mr. Cuomo earlier this week suggested was all but certain, is a crushing blow to the city’s restaurant industry, a vital economic pillar that has been struggling all year in the face of pandemic restrictions and a national recession.

For months, New York City’s restaurant owners have warned that their businesses, many of which operate on tight margins in the best of times, are on the edge of financial collapse. Thousands of employees, many of them low-wage workers, have been laid off since March, and their jobs have yet to fully return.

The industry’s anxieties are only mounting as winter approaches and frigid temperatures threaten to deter customers from dining outdoors. Industry groups have called repeatedly for federal or state financial assistance, with restaurant and bar owners watching nervously as stimulus talks drag on in Washington.

“Another forced government closure of New York City restaurants will cause an irreversible harm on even countless more small businesses and the hundreds of thousands of workers they employ, especially if it is not coupled with financial relief,” Andrew Rigie, the executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, said in a statement on Monday. Mr. Cuomo’s announcement came after weeks of shifting messages on indoor dining, which resumed in New York City only at the end of September.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/nyregion/indoor-dining-nyc.html

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I know PA is shutting down indoor dining state-wide as of Saturday 12:01 am. Philly had been more restrictive only opening limited indoor dining just after Labor Day.