A lot has happened in the past 7 months. For most, going out to eat has gone from a weekly tradition to a distant memory. Restaurants that often felt like a home away from home have seen their dining rooms go unused for months. This will be changing across much of the country in the coming days and weeks. New York City’s indoor dining guidelines have kicked into effect as of September 30th. While it seems almost everyone is ready to get close to normal now, it’s important to remember to tread carefully and make sure that you stay safe and that the restaurants you give your business to are also doing their part.
If you feel safe to do so, going out to eat can be a great way to support your favorite businesses. Eating out likely won’t be exactly how it was. Enforced capacity caps will mean the potential need to spread out the places you frequent. This reopening will provide a new way to break the cabin fever that has built up for families since quarantine started. Being able to find new ways to break up the ever increasing monotony that has set in over the past half a year has become key for the mental health of people of all ages.
One thing that will be important to remember as you begin to venture is to keep an eye out for symptoms in yourself and others. If you or someone you’ve been exposed to have had COVID-like symptoms, it’s wise to wait at home for a while to make sure that you’re not contagious. Making sure that you’re not unnecessarily exposing people to COVID is key too keeping everything open for the foreseeable future. Even though everyone is ready to go back to normality, please remember that things still aren’t exactly normal. Please continue to take the same precautions when considering going out and continue to pay attention to CDC guidlines.