Mayor Bill de Blasio noted on Thursday that it is only a matter of time before the state moves New York City into an "orange zone," which will put an immediate halt to all indoor dining. It's been two months since city restaurants were allowed to reopen at 25% capacity inside, and most places are barely holding on with some combination of indoor, takeout, and outdoor dining, which is becoming increasingly limited as colder weather rolls in.
Starting next week, City Winery will launch a pilot program requiring all customers dining indoors on Tuesdays and Wednesdays to take an on-site rapid COVID test in order to eat there, in an attempt to create a “100% COVID-tested” space. And they're hoping that maybe they'll be allowed to continue seating guests even after the state inevitably shuts down indoor dining.
"We got the heaters and the beautiful view looking at the Hudson River and all that, but it's cold, and that's a dining experience that most people aren't going to enjoy, and it's only going to get worse," Michael Dorf, founder & CEO of City Winery, told Gothamist. "We saw those headwinds coming with the winter, and we also clearly saw the numbers spiking and a lot more concern—both legitimate scientific concern and psychological concern from our customers who don't want to be inside. So this seems like the only way to go one more step in trying to protect our customers and protect our staff."
The venue left its flagship location in Hudson Square area last year and moved to a brand new location at Hudson River Park’s Pier 57, at West 15th Street, featuring "32,000 square feet of space for two performance venues, a seated 350-seat concert hall, a 150-capacity loft space, a restaurant and tasting room, and a wine production facility."
They were originally supposed to open earlier this year, but ended up reopening in the middle of October, a few weeks after indoor dining had resumed. Because of the state's rules about ticketed music and entertainment events during the pandemic, they haven't been allowed to host any artists either inside or outside. At 25% capacity, and with multiple parts of the venue unused, they've been able to seat around 100 guests inside, which is both far greater than most NYC restaurants, and also a fraction of their overall space.
Dorf insisted that they have been abiding by all the New York dining guidelines: in addition to temperature checks, contact tracing, and 8 feet of separation between tables, both customers and staff are required to wear masks inside and outside the space, customers are asked to keep their masks on while seated (and particularly while interacting with staff) and only take them off while consuming food and drink.
The tests are what Dorf calls an "additive" to those safety measures. City Winery has partnered with Accurex Diagnostic Services to administer the exams, which are known as Antigen tests with BD Veritor analyzers. Diners will have to prepay for the $50 tests on Resy in order to make a reservation.
When they arrive, guests are given a rapid, shallow nasal swab by a certified practitioner, then have to wait outside for 10-15 minutes for the results (everyone on staff must get tested every day as well). If they test negative for the virus, they can enter, with all the usual social distancing enforcement; if they test positive, they won't be allowed in, and instead will be offered a deeper nasal PCR test, and those results will be sent to a lab and validated within 24 hours.
"We want to see if there are 100 people a night at this point who would pay extra money to have this 'COVID-free' experience," Dorf said. "We think it could point to a solution to allow indoor dining to remain open."
Dorf said they've already had over 50 reservations booked for the first day the policy goes into effect, which is next Tuesday, November 24th. There are no plans to roll out the program to other locations yet—although City Winery has 12 locations throughout the country, at least four of them are shut down currently (in Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and D.C.).
Dr. Denis Nash, Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology and the Executive Director of CUNY’s Institute for Implementation Science in Population Health, said the idea was "interesting" and a "good concept."
"But one worries about the quality and validity of the test, given that it is being provided by a restaurant," Nash wrote in a text message. "The consequences of a false negative in this situation could be very, very serious. So need to be very clear on what the test is capable of and what it is not."
Nash also said that because New York City is projected to be under more restrictions in a matter of days, "I don’t think this is the time to do something like this."
"I think restaurants should ask for—if they haven’t already—and wait for guidance from the NYC DOHMH or the NYS DOH on this. That is essential in my view, since these are the agencies responsible for regulating restaurants in ways that can ensure the health and safety of New Yorkers."
Dorf said he reached out to Governor Andrew Cuomo's office this week to make his case, even if it is a long shot: "We're saying, I know you're headed to closing dining in the city, but would you make an exception for any establishment that enhances testing? Everyone agrees more testing is better. Would you allow restaurants to stay open indoors if they had testing protocol? And obviously I haven't heard back yet."
The governor's office did not immediately respond to our request for comment.
Accurex claims that their tests are 99% accurate for negative results, and around 90% accurate for positive results, which means there is a chance of false positives, which could result in some people being turned away from the door even if they aren't truly negative. It's a mixed bag when it comes to rapid tests in general: political pressure led to the early rollout of several of these tests, including one from Abbott Laboratories earlier this year which prompted the FDA to issue a rare public warning about the tests being unreliable.
Last summer, the Ravel Hotel in Long Island City reopened its rooftop Profundo pool lounge and started hosting pandemic parties that they justified by using the Abbott tests on all guests, despite the problems with them. Dorf is aware that some hotels tried to roll out things like this to mixed reactions. While the FDA's oversight of these tests has improved since earlier on in the pandemic, nothing is guaranteed.
The FDA just approved the first at-home COVID test this week (which is not related to the one being used by City Winery), and experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci have begun advocating for more home and local testing: "And you know why that would be terrific? Because if you decided that you wanted to have a small gathering with your mother-in-law and father-in-law and a couple of children, and you had a test right there," he told the Times this week. "It isn’t 100 percent. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. But the risk that you have, if everyone is tested before you get together to sit down for dinner, dramatically decreases. It might not ever be zero but, you know, we don’t live in a completely risk-free society."
If his Hail Mary bid to stay open amidst the indoor dining shutdown doesn't work, Dorf isn't sure whether he'd relaunch the pilot later in 2021 when indoor dining would presumably resume again.
"It's baby steps for us to serve 100 people food and beverage right now," Dorf said. "We need that to survive, to get to a place we really want to be, which is putting on culture again for 400 to 500 people every night. That's the core of our business. I don't see that coming back for a year, sadly."
