Philadelphia Dining Room Growing 50%: What You Need To Know

PHILADELPHIA - On Tuesday, Philadelphia authorities announced good news for the city's restaurants.

Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley said the city's restaurants will be 50% of their capacity as of Friday.

On September 8, city restaurants were allowed to eat indoors with a 25% capacity limit when Governor Tom Wolf gave restaurants across the state the ability to serve within a meal limit. 50% capacity.

Farley gave no indication at the time of when the city would allow 50 percent of the catering capacity indoors.

But this week Farley gave the green light to a 50% capacity limit for indoor meals.

What does that mean?

The new capacity limits correspond to the current restrictions in Pennsylvania.

And under the governor's rules, restaurants that want to increase their capacity must self-certify under state and CDC guidelines in addition to city rules.

Indoor dining restrictions that are similar to or exceed federal restrictions for indoor dining.

Restrictions on eating indoors include:

• Guests must wear masks when not seated at a table.
• a capacity limit of 25%;
• only four guests per table;
• six feet of space between tables;
• Without bar service, alcohol is only available in the same transaction as a meal.
• Indoor meal orders will be final called at 23:00
• Facilities must be closed before midnight;
• Physical barriers, such as sneeze guards or partitions, are installed in restaurant kitchens, as well as at cash registers, restaurants, and food collection areas where it is difficult to get socially 6 feet apart
• Employees are screened for symptoms before each shift and prevented from staying on site if they show symptoms of a coronavirus.
• Employees must wear masks and face protection.

Any facility that does not comply with these restrictions will be closed.

"The decrease in the number of cases we see shows the success of our strategy," Farley said. "I said we would slowly and carefully lower our restrictions as the number of cases continued to decrease, and we are now. If people continue to follow our advice, I think we can relax the restrictions further."

Farley said there wasn't an exact number in the coronavirus data that would cause the city to suspend indoor activities. However, he said the city would consider shutting down the indoor dining room if the number of cases or the percentage of positive tests increases dramatically and the evidence suggests the increase is related to the indoor dining room.

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