Danville restaurant reimagines itself to reopen safely amid COVID-19 pandemic
DANVILLE, Calif. (KGO) -- From the moment the first employees arrive, the staff at the Danville Brewing Company are taking steps to make sure they're protecting their customers, and themselves, from COVID 19.
Whether inside the kitchen, at the bar and beyond, all prep work is done with masks on. That includes the process of canning the brewery's signature beers.
But all the new protocols and precautions extend well-beyond masks and gloves.
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"This is our third full day," explained manager Courtney Foran. "We are doing the paper napkins, disposable. We're no longer using those linens. No longer having any presetting on the table, like salt and pepper shakers, all that other stuff. Everything is cleared and wiped down."
Like all restaurants in Contra Costa County, right now the Danville Brewing Company can only seat people outside at tables spaced at least six feet apart.
"Our mission has always been to get people outside," explained Casey Case, with Gates Associates, the firm that designed all of the exterior landscape spaces for the remodeled Danville Hotel, which houses the brewery and a number of other restaurants.
"I think there's a real opportunity there to shift to a little bit more of that European model where we see a greater level of comfort with the interaction of somebody who's sitting and eating versus somebody whose walking, and somebody whose walking and beginning to let that relationship intertwine," Case explained.
At the Danville Brewing Company, there are no diners inside yet, but adjustments have been made there too to ensure safety, but also the survival of a business that traditionally needs most of its tables to be occupied in order to thrive.
"We've still been doing a lot of to-gos, so there's definitely a lot of local support for us. And I think that might give us that little bit of an edge to overcome this," Foran said.
