ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Brewery owners in St. Petersburg said they are slowly starting to see more customers come back months after they were forced to shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Bars and breweries were among the establishments that went dark in March as Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered statewide business shutdowns in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus, which causes the respiratory illness known as COVID-19.
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Many drinking establishments were allowed to reopen on June 5, following an order issued by DeSantis that allowed bars and other vendors licensed to sell alcoholic beverages to operate at 50 percent capacity while requiring customers to be seated.
But three weeks later as the number of COVID-19 cases spiked, Department of Business and Professional Regulation Secretary Halsey Beshears ordered a shutdown of “vendors licensed to sell alcoholic beverages for consumption on the premises, but not licensed to offer food service.”
DeSantis and Beshears held a roundtable with St. Petersburg-area bar and brewery owners Thursday to reassure them they are working towards an end goal of reopening establishments like theirs across the state.
“We did the pause there, let’s get to get through here, which I think was reasonable, but I’ve told [Beshears], I want every business in Florida operating and we pretty much have 99%. You guys are kind of the last one. Everyone else is up and running,” DeSantis told a group of brewery owners during a round table discussion on Thursday. “People have to be able to go in business. It’s one thing to say, you know, we may need you to do some of these things for safety and health, and I think you guys would be willing to do it, but it’s another thing to say no, just, there’s no path to yes. So we’ll get to yes.”
Tavern owners throughout the state, including those who sat with DeSantis on Thursday, hurriedly rehabbed behind-the-counter operations, adding triple sinks, carving out prep areas and signing up for food-handling training so they can get the go-ahead from state regulators to turn the lights back on.
“I didn’t do anything different but put a damn Crock-Pot on my bar,” Becky Glerum, owner of Paddy Wagon Irish Pub in Plant City, told The News Service of Florida on Tuesday, a day after she reopened her business.
Glerum was able to start pulling beer taps again after she obtained a food-service license from the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, which oversees bars and restaurants.
Beshears had blamed the July uptick in coronavirus cases on “younger individuals” who packed into bars, pubs or nightclubs and disregarded social-distance requirements that had allowed the establishments to reopen.
But, departing from ordinary regulations, Beshears did not require that a minimum amount of bar owners’ sales come from food.
Critics of the state’s approach, including tavern owners and regulatory experts, say it doesn’t make sense.
“It kind of is ridiculous because the way they’re trying to draw the distinction is, there’s a distinction of selling food versus not selling food,” former department General Counsel Will Spicola, who also served as director of the department’s Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco, said in a telephone interview. “The people that want to go drink are still going to drink somewhere in some fashion, and drawing the line at alcohol is kind of the arbitrary part of this.”
State regulators don’t have the manpower or scientific know-how to manage the situation, Spicola said.
“They’re not in the immunology business,” he said. “Their job is not to do social-distance enforcement. Their job is to do beverage enforcement.”
Under intense pressure from bar owners for a reopening date, Beshears has said they should plan to remain walled off until the end of the year, but he’s also said he doesn’t have “an accurate timeline” for reopening.
But Thursday’s comments from DeSantis seemed to leave the door open for a quicker return than some anticipated.
Dunnigan, who is in the process of applying for a food-service license, also called the food requirement ridiculous.
“They don’t actually care if you sell food. They just want you to get the license. To us that looks like the state trying to squeeze money out of people who are already hurting,” he said. “We did nothing wrong. We’re suffering because other people didn’t do what they were supposed to do. … They (state regulators) failed to do their job so they made everybody suffer for it.”
The department’s Division of Hotels and Restaurants received a total of 1,657 food-service applications, not including renewals, in August. The agency doesn’t track how many of those applicants also have licenses to sell alcoholic beverages, Smith said.
But the reopening option doesn’t work for everyone.
Seaside Tavern owner Patti Miracle, whose tiny bar is located in a strip mall in Ormond-by-the-Sea, said she doesn’t have the space to comply with food-service requirements. Her lease also restricts her ability to sell prepared food.
Movie theaters, restaurants and schools have reopened, Miracle pointed out in a phone interview. The restrictions on bars don’t make sense, she said.
“Life is back to normal for everyone but us,” said Miracle, who’s among a number of bar owners suing the state over the closures. “I don’t fault any of the bars that are doing whatever they possibly can to survive this. But I’m forced to have to liquidate my assets to survive this.”
Miracle said she turned into an “accidental activist” after bars were shuttered in the spring.
“At the beginning, I was shocked, devastated and confused,” she said. “But now, it’s beyond ridiculous. It’s definitely discrimination. …They don’t want bars that just serve alcohol. They want everybody to serve food.”
Miracle’s lawyer, Jacob Weil, agreed.
“It absolutely is a gimmick. There’s no doubt about that. There’s no differentiation in the way that they’re operating.
It’s simply a way for the Department of Business and Professional Regulation and the governor to look like they’re doing something, which seems to be more important to them than actually doing something,” he said.
