Here’s What California’s New Color-Coded Reopening Plan Means for Restaurants

by Farley Elliott 

Indoor dining is now possible again across the state, but it’s going to be a while for LA County

A new color-coded reopening framework for California has big implications for the state’s restaurant scene, which has been crushed by the ongoing pandemic and its related economic volatility. The plan, announced on Friday by Governor Gavin Newsom, creates a four-tier system that runs county-by-county across the state, allowing for those areas with reduced COVID-19 cases and positivity rates to reopen ahead of more heavily impacted neighboring counties.

Meeting the needed criteria at the county level means that restaurants within those certain counties (Napa and El Dorado, for example) can begin to reopen for limited indoor dining service today. Newsom previously closed indoor dining statewide on July 13.

The so-called Blueprint for a Safer Economy, which does away with the highly criticized local approach that Newsom first introduced when reopening sectors of the economy earlier this year, permits the entire state to “progress in phases based on risk levels with appropriate time between each phase in each county.” In short, counties will be graded by the state using four different color shades, each of which represent important data thresholds: a reduction in the seven-day average of the number of new daily cases per 100,000 residents, and a reduction in the seven-day average of positive tests by percentage, as shown in the chart below.

Read the rest of the story on Eater Los Angeles

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