Lexington restaurants react to long-awaited full capacity announcement

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) - Governor Beshear says, effective June 11, Kentucky will be returning to full capacity for all venues and events.

This has been a change these businesses have been waiting for. But, with weeks to go before things reopen completely, businesses are having to decide for themselves how to handle their mask policy.

Many businesses were already trying to figure out how to react to the governor’s announcement about the changes to the mask mandate.

“It’s left a lot of business owners and a lot of national companies were there like well we can’t tell people if people are vaccinated or not,” said Andrew Cooperrider.

Cooperrider got into a fight with the state last year when he refused to close his business, Brewed, after the governor ordered restaurants to close for a few weeks in response to rising COVID-19 numbers.

He told me he felt like the state should go ahead and open things up now, he also said those businesses would have a hard time filling all of their open positions as long as the state was still excepting extra unemployment money from the federal government.

The owner of Winchells told us they aren’t requiring masks for customers or vaccinated workers, but unvaccinated workers will still be required to wear them.

The president of the Restaurant Association told us there are still a lot of questions about how that order should be enforced, but it looks like that won’t be a question much longer.

Chef Ouita Michael told us over the next month, while the governor’s mask mandate is still in effect for unvaccinated people, they’re going to be trusting their customers.

“We are not going to police the mask mandate,” Michael said. “I’ve said that since the beginning. I feel like it’s set up a conflict between guests and staff members it’s too difficult for both parties.”

While all restaurants were affected, some were hit harder than others. Those with smaller dining rooms, like Bourbon and Toulouse, had to close them completely.

The owner of Bourbon and Toulouse in Lexington tells us they’ll be making permanent changes based on the way they operated during the pandemic. They tell us they plan to continue with their expanded carry-out business, going as far as adding a window that should be completed by the time they open their dining room.

“We’ve been running a curbside and delivery business only for 14 months and to transition now to a completely different concept which is going to be curbside delivery and dine-in, which we didn’t use to do before,” said Kevin Heathcoat, Bourbon & Toulouse. “It’s a big task and it’s a big challenge that we’re trying to figure out how we’re going to face it. I just like everything we’ve done in the pandemic we’re gonna have to pivot once again and figure it out and we’ll do it.”

Heathcoat told us they will still have their vaccinated employees wear masks for the time being, but that will be a day-to-day decision.

One of the owners at Shamrock told us he didn’t think they’d be able to open at 100% capacity on June 11 because of the shortage of workers. He said they’d probably still be at around 60%, and work their way up from there.

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