On Sunday, Sugarpine will sell you drive-thru ice cream for Mother’s Day -- so long as you wear a mask

The Larch Mountain Sundae at Sugarpine Drive-In.

The Larch Mountain Sundae at Sugarpine Drive-In.Michael Russell | The Oregonian

This Sunday, Sugarpine Drive-in will reopen its popular drive-thru for the first time since March, offering rosé wine popsicles; bottles of Oregon beer, wine and cider; and ice cream sundaes topped with fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies or cinnamon-sugar doughnuts to-go.

Sound good?

Then get ready to cover your face.

Three days after Gov. Kate Brown announced employees at restaurants seeking to reopen dining rooms closed since mid-May would have to wear masks, Sugarpine is set to become the tip of the spear for a massive social experiment, becoming one of the first restaurants in Oregon to require face coverings for customers picking up takeout.

So far, at least eight states have required citizens wear masks in public, with more than half -- New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island -- in the Northeast region most heavily affected by COVID-19. In Oregon, a state-wide face covering policy puts the question of whether to require masks of customers on each individual business. During a Thursday news conference announcing the state’s plans for reopening, Brown only said she wanted Oregonians to be “kind and smart” when considering whether to wear masks in public.

The face-mask recommendation largely stems from an announcement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which reversed course on April 3, recommending that people start wearing “simple cloth face coverings” in public places to “slow the spread of the virus and help people who may have the virus and do not know it from transmitting it to others.”

In the month since, the decision to wear a mask has become a political flash point, even as masks are now required at some grocery stores. Attempts at enforcements have already led to violence, including the shooting of a McDonalds worker in Oklahoma and the shooting death of a Family Dollar security guard in Michigan.

Sugarpine was already something of an anachronism in Troutdale, a city of about 15,000 people near the edge of metro Portland best known for Edgefield, the big McMenamins hotel and concert venue. The restaurant, which comes from a pair of Portland chefs, serves salads made from local farm greens, smoked meat sandwiches on wholesome bread and gorgeous swirls of soft-serve ice cream to a typically packed patio of guests, some of them still wet from a dip in the nearby Sandy River.

Speaking by phone from the restaurant Thursday, where he was busy smoking 250 pounds of ribs for Saturday pickup, Ryan Domingo said he was “flabbergasted” by some of the behavior he’s seen at the restaurant and its surroundings. Glen Otto, the Troutdale city park and popular summer swimming spot, has remained open through the pandemic, 8 a.m. to dusk every day, and is often packed, Domingo said.

“There’s just a ton of people in the parking lot, walking, down by the river -- at 8 a.m. there are a dozen fishermen out looking for spring salmon and the end of the steelhead run,” Domingo said. “It’s troubling, certainly for us. We’ve been trying to limit exposure for our customers and our staff, but every day, we see people who don’t seem to understand the ongoing efforts to flatten the curve, and some people who just don’t seem to understand at all.”

Enforcement will not be the priority on day one. Sunday’s experiment is both a preview of the summer, when Sugarpine hopes to open its drive-thru full time, and an opportunity to educate customers, Domingo said. The restaurant will have face coverings on hand for people who don’t have them, and guests won’t need a perfectly fitted N95 mask to get in line. “An athletic sock, an old T-shirt, a bandana, a turtleneck, a towel -- it’s really about safety, and how it relates to you,” Domingo said. “We want to normalize mask wearing, and continue to do that throughout the summer.”

Long-term, Domingo says he’s ”happy to close the window and ask folks to move along" if they refuse to cover their faces.

SHUTTING DOWN TO RECHARGE

On March 17, Sugarpine Drive-In co-owner Emily Cafazzo came down with a high fever just as the governor was banning on-premises dining at restaurants and bars across the state. The sickness was eventually diagnosed as shingles, but the couple decided to shut their restaurant nonetheless, although many Troutdale businesses did not, Domingo said.

Two weeks later, they returned with a different business model, similar to ones restaurants across America have adopted in an effort to survive the coronavirus crisis and its aftershocks. Each Tuesday at 7 a.m., the restaurant’s new online shop opens up for Saturday pickup between noon and 4 p.m. For sale? Family-style meals, blue plate specials, plant-based bowls and boxes filled with produce from small West Gorge farms including Fiddlehead, Blue Raven and Winters farms for customers to recreate Sugarpine’s salads at home. Merchandise and gift cards are also available.

Troutdale's Sugarpine Drive-In will reopen its drive-thru Sunday for to-go ice cream, rosé popsicles and takeout beer and wine -- but you'll have to cover your face.

Troutdale's Sugarpine Drive-In will reopen its drive-thru Sunday for to-go ice cream, rosé popsicles and takeout beer and wine -- but you'll have to cover your face.Anna Spoerre

May is typically the month when the restaurant would be hosting an open house to help ramp up its summer staffing to about 40 people. Instead, they’re working with a skeleton crew of 10 full-time employees. The slimmed-down crew jives with reports from other Oregon businesses. Even restaurants that have successfully transitioned to takeout report retaining 25% of their staff or less. An estimated 127,000 laid off service industry workers made up the bulk of Oregon’s early unemployment figures, which now stand at more than 380,000 people.

On Tuesday, Domingo announced the Mother’s Day drive-thru reopening and the new face-covering policy on Instagram. The post gathered 91 comments as of Friday. Most were asking for specifics on the promotion, whether Sugarpine would offer ice cream by the cone (no) or with a dairy-free ice cream option (yes). For a commenter who called the mask policy a “bummer,” Domingo was blunt.

“We politely refuse to put our staff in danger for our customers’ convenience or to satisfy your safety preferences,” he wrote. “We’re not being trendy, we’re being safe. And we want customers that will respect that. We, after all, are the ones in harm’s way, for you.”

Domingo says that while most customers are respectful, with about 60% wearing masks during Saturday pickups, the kind of interaction visible to the public on Instagram happens every day at the restaurant.

“There’s probably a dozen interactions a day, where people come up and say, ‘Where can I buy something?’ And I literally have to ask the question, based on the initial interaction, ‘Have you heard of this thing called COVID?’ And they’re like, ‘Huh? You mean I can’t buy something right now?’ And I’ll say, ‘Yeah, we’re closed.’"

Domingo says people sitting in their cars might feel a false sense of security in drive-thrus.

“Most restaurants these days are doing the leave the food on the table, step back, take your food thing,” Domingo said. “We’re closer than three feet away from customers at some points in the drive-thru, with no plexiglass at this point. And we’re just working to limit the impact of this virus on our staff, and the spread to all of our customers and their families.”

Domingo wonders how many of his customers understand that, as the CDC has noted, asymptomatic people can spread the coronavirus.

“We don’t need to be open for business,” Domingo said. “We’re open because we really care about our employees, we care about our community. And when you live out here in these semi-rural communities, you really depend on these local businesses more than you would in a city environment. We are an essential business for a lot of families out here. And we want to be in it for the long haul as well. So we need to take the steps that we can to ensure that we can make it.”

Head to Sugarpine Drive-In at 1208 E. Historic Columbia River Hwy., Troutdale between noon and 4 p.m. on Sunday, May 9 to pick up your sundae or rosé popsicle. Just don’t forget to bring your mask.

-- Michael Russell, mrussell@oregonian.com, @tdmrussell

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