Outdoor dining expansions, to-go cocktails set to stay throughout California
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — While COVID-19 restrictions will roll back on June 15th, California will continue giving a green-light to expanded outdoor dining a and to-go cocktails.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Thursday that these added extensions will carry on through the calendar year to help restaurants recover.
Drew Cuddy is the owner of Satellite on State Street.
“This has changed the entire pandemic for us,” he said. “It’s been sort of a healing, spacious, wonderful outdoor space.”
Santa Barbara resident Jason Carlton believes that expanded outdoor dining should remain a permanent part of town.
“It’s a wonderful idea, it’s going to help businesses thrive,” he said. “Gives them a lot more space to work with and I think it should be that way anyway.”
As customers keep coming to sit outside at Satellite, Cuddy has been able to hire back his full staff.
“We’ve been able to grow and I know a lot of other restaurants around town are growing from where they were last March,” he said. “People are also enjoying State Street much more.”
Over at Harry's Plaza Cafe in Loreto Plaza, to-go cocktails provided a big boost to business.
“For most restaurants to recover from a year of not making anything, any opportunity to sell some more drinks was huge,” general manager Kevin Hebert said. “I also think some people still want to stay home and order to-go.”
Despite its indoor area soon set to fully open up, Hebert thinks that most people will prefer to sit outside.
“Even after June 15th, there will be a lot of people that will want to sit outside for a great period of time,” he said.
As the summer starts, some say that there’s more people in Santa Barbara’s downtown core than ever before.
“I think that this {outdoor dining expansion} is the most valuable change to Santa Barbara that I’ve seen in my half decade of living here,” Cuddy concluded.
The extension of serving to-go cocktails only applies to bars and restaurants that serve food.
