Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation Friday enabling restaurants to keep their pandemic-era expansions into areas like sidewalks and parking lots.
The two bills, Assembly Bill 61 and Senate Bill 314, allow restaurants to keep their outdoor dining areas throughout the pandemic’s duration and during a one-year regulatory grace period after the state ends its state of emergency.
During that time, local jurisdictions will have the opportunity to modify their zoning laws to permanently allow outdoor dining areas.
Some Bay Area cities, like San Mateo and Walnut Creek, have already made their outdoor dining programs permanent or considered plans to do so.
Newsom, speaking at a restaurant in Oakland, implored European cities that have embraced al fresco dining to “eat your heart out,” and argued that the state needs to continue rethinking how it can support restaurants and other small businesses during the pandemic and after it ends.
“This is a pathway for these businesses to, frankly, make up for a lot of the constraints that have been imposed upon them over the course of the last 18 months,” he said.
Newsom also signed a bill authored by Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, to allow restaurants, bars, breweries and wineries to sell alcohol with to-go food orders through the end of 2026.
In June, the state’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control extended similar regulatory relief of to-go alcohol through the end of 2021.
Newsom noted that Dodd’s bill is more restrictive than the executive orders he signed over the last 18 months enabling to-go alcohol sales in an effort to ensure that businesses are not operating without permits and public health and safety is maintained.
“These bills are nuanced … and that nuance includes a food component, it includes a component for pick-up, not delivery,” Newsom said, adding that local jurisdictions will have leeway in terms of enforcing the sale of to-go alcohol in a safe manner.
“This is an important step toward helping our restaurants, which have been hit hard by the pandemic,” Dodd said in a statement. “It will ensure their recovery, protecting jobs and our economy.”
12 comments
Gavin Newscom back to the French Laundry no penalty.
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… California legislators know what is best for all communities under “one size fits all” laws from Sacramento.
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Sarcasm intended.
With the ugly head of high inflation rearing on the horizon, folks better get their money now.
If the $3T boondoggle passes through Congress and gets signed, we could see 20% inflation by the new year.
Restaurants and bars will be raising their prices even more than they are now.
Prices for everything will increase, wages will not follow along and then the recession will hit.
After the Covid nonsense, followed by a ultra high inflation, a recession, then the depression, there is only dark and foreboding gloom in our future.
Plus, Cellophane, the government will be monitoring our bank accounts for every $600+ transaction to crush us even further!
Do not worry, komrade. After the collapse, big brother will issue you 1.15 kilogram of bug paste every day, as long as you have had your 50th Pfizer booster and have a social credit score in good standing.
Speak for yourself on the impending gloom ahead as many of us are doing just fine and will continue doing just fine in all surroundings.
The Covid bs hasn’t affected alot of us 1 bit.
More idiocy from Gavin.
Has Newsome taken his unvaccinated daughter to any restaurants lately? Asking for the staff and customers.
Alcoholism costs the American taxpayer 249 billion a year.
https://www.verywellmind.com /the-cost-of-excessive-alcohol-use-in-the-u-s-67482
Yeah, why not.
Why even require people to order it with food? That seems silly. Safeway doesn’t make people buy bread in order to buy a 1.75L of rotgut vodka for $8.49.
Newsom will always be remembered to be a simple limousine liberal minded politician who literally payed his supporters to vote for him with our tax dollars. People speak of changing the recall process. Maybe we should begin to start with the vote buying process first. Good luck on that dream in this socialist leaning state…
To-go alcohol sales are a waste of time. No one is paying 5 times the cost for the same bottle you can get at Safeway. People will pay restaurant wine prices for a bottle with their meal while dining in as part of the dining experience. But they won’t pay that much for a bottle to-go.
A woman who is a wholesale wine distributor for bars and restaurants in San Francisco said their business is down 90%. How do you stay in business when you lose 90% of your sales?
for those of you who said last year “things will get back to normal, no one is going to allow this thing to get out of hand, people will fight back”… how is it all working for you now?
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