Bars and Covid

By Kendra Hill

This past year covid has played a major role in how business survive and are able to stay open.

Back when covid was first announced restaurants where to close their doors and only do drive through or take out services only. Many bars where affected by this until Gov. Reynolds announced that she would allow

bars to do take out drinks. By giving the bars the ok to do this many bars saw a huge rise in alcohol sales.

Many local bars around the great lakes region also saw their numbers vary from previous years. When they heard that all bars where to close their doors they had to scramble to find out if they were going to be financially stable to re open their doors when Kim Reynolds gives them the ok.

“We had to quickly figure out what we were going to do and how where we going to be able to keep our employees,” Said the owner of Captains of Okoboji. “When Kim Reynolds said that we were allowed to send drinks out the door that gave us a little bit of income but not as much as we would be making on a typical weekend. We are thinking that this years revenue will be decreased by close to 30 percent than from previous years.”

Many bars are required to have the six feet social distancing rule and many of them are following that rule. A lot of the bars are still following all of governors guidelines due to the fact that they could face a fine that ranges from 100-2,000.

“We saw a huge decline over the past few months when covid seemed to be at its peak point,” Said the owner of The Nautical. “We are hoping for a better season in 2021 with the new vaccine coming out. Many of the customers we had were local. From previous years we had people coming from all over but due to covid a lot of travelers stayed home.”

Many bars are hoping for a better season in 2021.