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Anyone who wants to eat a meal, order a beer, take a yoga class or watch a big indoor concert in Berkeley will soon have to prove that they have been vaccinated against COVID-19.
City officials announced Wednesday evening that Berkeley was joining San Francisco to issue a health order requiring customers of many domestic businesses to show proof of vaccination.
The requirement goes into effect September 10 for indoor services at restaurants, bars, clubs, gyms, dance and yoga studios, and events with at least 1,000 attendees. The rule will also apply in theaters or places of entertainment where food or drink is sold.
The ordinance also requires workers at these companies to be vaccinated or undergo weekly coronavirus tests, starting October 15. Employees in many other settings will be subject to the same requirement, including those in public and private daycares and adult care facilities. and day programs, dental offices and pharmacies, and home health workers.
City officials have been discussing a proof of vaccination requirement for weeks, amid a spate of cases caused by the highly contagious delta variant. Some bars, restaurants and concert halls in Berkeley already have their own policies in place restricting entry to those who are fully vaccinated.
In announcing the order, health officials said it was intended to reduce transmission of COVID-19 in environments where the virus can most easily spread – indoor spaces where people take off their masks facials for eating or drinking, breathing heavily during exercise, or gathering in large groups.
“Vaccinations not only reduce each person’s risk of infection and disease, but they increase the safety of our entire community,” said Dr. Lisa Hernandez, chief health officer at Berkeley.
Affected businesses will need to verify proof of vaccination for all customers 12 years of age and older before allowing them access to interior areas. There are some exceptions to ordering for concert halls where tickets were sold before Friday. The employee requirement extends to contractors, volunteers, and those in security or maintenance positions who perform work in facilities where workers are to be vaccinated or tested.
With carrot
Berkeley restaurant owner Diana Days is not opposed to a vaccination warrant for restaurant patrons, she told Berkeleyside last month. Days is the owner of Cafe Buenos Aires, a restaurant on Shattuck Avenue with indoor seating and a quick empanadas and take-out coffee shop. “I’m pro everything, I’m pro vaccine, pro mask, pro whatever it takes to keep people safe,” she said.
When Berkeleyside told him about a potential tenure, eight people were sitting in his restaurant. “I wouldn’t mind putting signs on my tables telling people they need to get the vaccine to sit down,” she said. She was concerned, however, about how rigorously the restaurant would be able to check proof of vaccination and still deal with the constant flow of masked delivery drivers and take-out customers passing through the busy restaurant.
“We usually only have one or two people” interacting with customers, so “it will be a lot more work if we have to check the cards,” she said.
This extra work is also a priority for Nick Cho, co-owner of Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters, which has offices in San Francisco and Berkeley. “Restaurants are not like bars,” Cho told Berkeleyside. “Bars have bouncers… None of my employees signed up to be a bouncer. They signed up to make coffee.
That said, Cho agrees that a vaccination warrant is “probably what is needed for the public good.” In addition to his coffee business, he recently developed an unexpected second career as a Tik Tok celebrity as “Your Korean Dad” and did paid work for the California Department of Public Health to encourage vaccination. through its social media platforms. But his relationship with public health officials doesn’t mean he’s afraid to discuss the complications that come with a warrant.
As long as each cafe and restaurant is forced to set its own rules about which patrons to allow inside, “Every customer service interaction is a potential collision of debates, especially at Berkeley,” Cho said. A formal rule for orienting customers (what some companies call a ‘tap the sign’) will diffuse a lot of these confrontations, he said.
Like Days, Cho is worried about the additional resources required to verify cards or a state-generated QR code for each domestic customer. So by September 10, when the city’s mandate goes into effect, the Wrecking Ball at 1600 Shattuck Ave. will only become a window service operation. This way, the cafe will not see any slowdown in service, nor need to increase staff to handle vaccination confirmations. “These are the sacrifices that need to be made,” Cho said.
Collin Doran, the owner of Berkeley Standby Homemade Cafe, said a vaccination warrant might be what restaurants need to stay open. “People don’t react to the carrot,” Doran said of the fight to get everyone who qualifies to get the shot. “Maybe if we start taking some things away, we’ll eventually change our mind.”
Unlike Cho and Days, the majority of Doran’s activities are sit-down dining, indoors or in Homemade’s recently completed parklet. Doran expects Homemade to check for proof of vaccination at the dining room door, “and we’ll tell everyone else they can eat out,” he said.
Doran doesn’t expect too much of a step back from clients and has said his staff will likely be thrilled when the tenure goes into effect. “All of my employees were happy when the mask’s tenure was announced,” he said, “we’re all frustrated that this is what it takes, but these rules might be the only way restaurants can stay. viable. “
For restaurateurs like Cho, Days and Doran, this latest order of health is just one more challenge to overcome as we return to a semblance of pre-pandemic life, and they hope diners pick up the pace. “But you know what?” Doran asked rhetorically. “What if you’re not vaccinated and you’re crazy that you can’t eat inside?” So we don’t want you here in the first place.
Featured photo: Amir Aziz
Eve Batey is the acting editor of Nosh at Berkeleyside. Email: [email protected].
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