A consortium of Louisville-area food service establishments is coming together to develop and implement safety protocols for staff and guests.
In an information release earlier in the week, the Responsible Bar and Restaurant Coalition explained its goals and offered a mission statement. Rather than cherry-pick excerpts at the risk of omitting relevant passages, the release is reprinted here in its entirety, followed by the current list of participating restaurants and bars.
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THE RESPONSIBLE BAR AND RESTAURANT COALITION OF LOUISVILLE FORMS TO CREATE SAFETY STANDARDS
Restaurants and bars come together to form coalition for safely opening restaurants
(LOUISVILLE, KY, August 5, 2020) A group of Louisville bars and restaurants comes together as the Responsible Bar and Restaurant Coalition to develop a set of guidelines and principles to ensure staff and guest safety during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. Participating establishments will adhere to a strict set of standards and guidelines as well as follow protocol for testing staff and collecting data and reporting back to the group.
The mission for the Responsible Bar and Restaurant Coalition is:
We are an independent restaurant and bar coalition that is committed to the safe, responsible operation of food service establishments and bars in the greater Louisville region. We are a self-governing group of chefs, restaurateurs, bar owners and partners that believe in adhering to the strict safety measures that allow for our businesses to stay open and keep our guests and team members safe while also tracking actual data to document the safety and efficacy of our safety model. We are transparent, welcoming and supportive of each other, but we hold all of the businesses in this coalition to the highest of standards to foster and uphold an environment where our customers feel safe, secure and welcome.
Our goals are simple. We want to keep our customers safe. We want to keep our team members safe. We want to keep our businesses open until there is an end to the COVID-19 pandemic. We believe that these three goals can work together and are not contradictory. By achieving these three goals, we can start to rebuild our local economy, retain essential jobs in our industry and preserve the cultural value of independent restaurants that will ultimately lead to increased tourism when travel is allowed to return to their pre-pandemic numbers.
We strive to prove that restaurants and bars that are following the guidelines we set in place are safe places for the public to gather. We will ask all restaurants and bars to record the number of customers they serve each night. We will record this data in a log that is available to the public. We hope to prove, over time, that any potential increase in the rate of COVID transmission and any potential spike in positive cases is not associated with our restaurant and bar establishments. We believe that if you operate a restaurant or bar safely, according to our measures, there is no correlation between the spread of COVID-19 and our establishments
Safety guidelines will include but not be limited to: hand sanitizer at host stands, socially distanced floor plans and seating options, maximizing air flow, removing communal items from tables, sanitizing tech and equipment every fifteen minutes, requiring guests to wear masks, limited seating capacity, record daily temperatures of staff, test staff every three weeks.
Participating bars and restaurants will report to the group the number of guests served each week, the number of employees at the establishment each week, and any positive COVID-19 cases each week. The Responsible Bar and Restaurant Coalition will also have guidelines for how restaurants and bars are to handle positive asymptomatic cases or cases of illness among staff.
The participating restaurants include:
610 Magnolia
Barn8
Bar Vetti
Decca
The Fat Lamb Modern Kitchen & Bar
Feast BBQ
Foko
Four Pegs
Gold Bar
Holy Grale
Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse
The Limbo Lounge
The Mayan Café
Nouvelle Louisville
The Pearl
Pints & Union
Porcini
Royals Hot Chicken
The Silver Dollar
Superchefs
Toasty’s Tavern
Trouble Bar
Volare
Wiltshire Pantry
Additional restaurants and bars will be joining the Responsible Bar and Restaurant Coalition in the coming weeks. Operators who are interested in joining can learn more via the web site.
