Already struggling to stay afloat with the skeleton of the staff and reduced to takeout, delivery, and outdoor dining, New York City’s restaurants and bars suffered another blow Thursday when Governor Andrew M. Cuomo established new limits on your ability to serve alcohol.
The most important restriction announced by Mr. Cuomo prohibits restaurants from serving alcohol to customers who also do not buy food.
The rule already applied to take-away alcohol orders, but it was unclear how strictly bars and restaurants complied with it or how seriously it was applied. It has now been extended to people sitting outside bars and restaurants.
And seats are now a must for those who consume what they have ordered. No more stopping and keeping the drink in hand.
“No food? Then no alcohol,” Cuomo said at a press conference.
The governor said the movements, which apply throughout the state, were necessary to enforce rules that require social distancing and the use of facial covering to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
The action came after several weeks of summer heat that drew crowds of people who had been largely confined to their homes for months on the streets of the city’s neighborhoods filled with bars and restaurants to drink and socialize.
The governor and others have previously voiced alarm over images posted on social media showing large groups in East Village and Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan and areas in Brooklyn and Queens that had gathered with little apparent consideration for maintaining social distance.
For the food service industry, the governor’s announcement was the second major setback in recent weeks.
Last week, restaurants and bars were ready to reopen for reduced-capacity indoor dining and other restrictions as the city moved into the fourth phase of its reopening process.
But on July 1, Mayor Bill de Blasio, in consultation with Mr. Cuomo, indefinitely halted the return of indoor dining as the number of virus cases increased in states that had moved faster to allow for it. , raising the specter of a second wave of infections in New York.
Luis Ferré-Sadurní contributed reporting.
