Bars reopen in Augusta after governor’s restriction lifted
For the past couple of weeks, Chad Mac has seen how businesses all around him on Peach Orchard Road have been allowed to reopen, but Monday, he finally has the chance to reopen his business.
“It’s been very aggravating,” he said. “We’ve been closed for three months and everything on Peach Orchard Road has been open when they finally opened everything. They’ve been open now for a while and we are the only business that wasn’t.”
Mac is the owner of Kickers Pizza Bar and for the past three months he has been closed due to the restrictions placed on bars and other businesses. He said they are behind on bills and if enough money doesn’t start coming in soon, it is hard to see how they can stay open.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen. We don’t know if people during all of this time have just gotten used to not going there and maybe they won’t. We don’t know what to think. We are just going to open up with our fingers crossed and pray that they come back,” he said. “I think that it’s a miracle that if we even can make it now. If customers don’t start rolling in heavy, then we may still lose the bar.”
Gov. Brian Kemp announced last week that bars and nightclubs will be allowed to reopen starting Monday as long as they follow a set of guidelines released by his office last week. Guidelines include limiting occupancy to 25 patrons or 35% of the building’s occupancy and only serving drinks to seated patrons or in designated areas.
Mac said he plans to follow the governor’s guidelines to remain open, but believes many businesses around the area are not following them.
“This is the third extension that they gave us. We’ve been down there cleaning three times in a row thinking we are opening and they tell us they are going to extend it the day before,” he said. “We are going to be still doing that, cleaning, keeping things clean. We bought some six feet distancing signs, we bought T-shirts that say ‘Keep your distance’, stuff like that. We are going to make sure everything is sanitary.”
At 2nd City Distilling Company, owner David Long said they were getting ready to reopen their tasting room Tuesday. He said they decided to follow Gov. Kemp’s guidelines on bars to see when they would reopen.
“We operate, even though we like to call it a tasting room, it operates similar to how a bar does with custom cocktails and things like that,” Long said. “We were following along with the governor’s guidelines of June 1 being able to open back up.”
Since the pandemic began, the distillery has shifted to making hand sanitizer for first responders and companies. Long said they are still planning to continue making hand sanitizer, but now plan to shift back to making their liquor products.
“We are still going to do it,” he said. “We’ll do it until the demand ceases or decreases and it has not, so we are still trying to provide it where it is needed. There is still some folks having trouble getting it.”
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For safety, Long said they’ll only allow half capacity in their tasting room, plan to keep doors open, will wipe down everything including after a customer leaves, will have disposable menus and employees will be wearing personal protective equipment. He said opening their tasting room will help them generate revenue.
“(The tasting room) is one of our main sources of revenue with the way we operate because our facility, although we are a manufacturing facility, we depend on the entertainment side of it from people coming to take tours and taste our cocktails and take bottles home from the tasting room,” he said.
Long said he would have liked to be able to reopen sooner, but also noted the fact they would probably wouldn’t have been ready since they were only focused on producing hand sanitizer. He said the community support has been important to make sure they can remain open.
“(Community support) is extremely important. If it wasn’t for that aspect, we wouldn’t be here now. We would not be able to reopen,” he said. “We can’t tell people how much we appreciate that, for sure, and we hope that it continues moving forward as things get back to normal.”
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