We have been eating out inside a restaurant at least once a week whenever the restaurants have been open. After MoCo restaurants closed, we've eaten in restaurants whenever we happen to be in an area where they are open. Looking forward to being able to drop in a restaurant in MoCo again next week!

I will go to the larger restaurants where you can space out. Not the small "hole-in-the wall" types.

Anonymous wrote:Indoor dining will resume in Montgomery County starting Valentine's Day
Restrictions include capping indoor dining at 25% capacity, not serving alcohol after 10 p.m., and imposing a 90-minute time limit for diners.

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/indoor-dining-ban-lifted-montgomery-county-25-percent-capacity/65-0e6b994e-f568-4dad-9271-e294592f6c2e


For those of you who live in NOVA and did not ban dinning lately since MOCO did it some mid Dec., how did it impacted your numbers? Did it get worse?

Smart to do that two weeks before in-person school starts so that indoor dining rather than in-person school is blamed for any outbreaks among the families of non-DL MCPS students.

Anonymous wrote:I’ll def eat indoors. For sure. Ate indoors in Texas, NC and Georgia as well over last few months. No problem. Tons of room w restrictions on capacity. There are a bunch of municipalities across our country that are open (schools, restaurants) and doing just fine. See no reason why MOCO is any different than anywhere else.

What's your definition of "doing just fine"?

Anonymous wrote:
With the new more transmissible variants, this is a HUGE mistake.

Agree

So stupid

I’ll def eat indoors. For sure. Ate indoors in Texas, NC and Georgia as well over last few months. No problem. Tons of room w restrictions on capacity. There are a bunch of municipalities across our country that are open (schools, restaurants) and doing just fine. See no reason why MOCO is any different than anywhere else.

Anonymous wrote:Been last week to IKEA, and was surprised to see their indoor Restaurant opened for business and serving meatballs to their cold crowds.
I was like.. whaaaat?

Then I remembered they are in PG county.

I need to go.

I posted upthread that we've been doing more takeout than we previously did. But, TBH, it doesn't nearly make up for the food that I used to eat at work. In the before-times, I would usually buy a coffee every morning (although I was trying to cut that out for environmental reasons), and then get a salad or soup or something at lunch every day. So probably $2500 per year at least on that stuff. I also would do real sit-down lunches with colleagues every couple of months, plus business travel a few days a month (but that was out of town). I think for hotels and restaurants, a lot of the loss is the business customer. I am sure that the Prets downtown are just being crushed, whereas Uncle Julio's in Bethesda is probably still doing a brisk business (although probably selling less booze and soda, which hurts the bottom line).

Been last week to IKEA, and was surprised to see their indoor Restaurant opened for business and serving meatballs to their cold crowds.
I was like.. whaaaat?

Then I remembered they are in PG county.

For those of you who don't dine in or take out, did you consider buying a gift cart once a week or however often you used to dine at your favorite restaurant and keep them for the post covid times to redeem so you could help to keep your favorite restaurant afloat?

I know that some places around the globe are promoting this kind of movement and they keep their places afloat.

It does not seem to be a bad idea. What say you?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you live in MOCO do you plan to resume if you dinned before, do you plan to stay away or do you plan to modify?

We haven't eaten inside or outside a restaurant since last spring. Its been a year now. I don't plan on eating at a restaurant for a long time given COVID. Carryout only.

Same. And we don’t do carry out either. We just see no need to eat food that is not made in our own house at this time.

We ate out twice a week in the before times. We haven’t eaten indoors since March and won’t be.

I will eat indoors at 25% Capacity yes. But we don’t each put much anyway. Maybe once a month.

Who are all these people clamoring to eat indoors at restaurants? It's crazy.

I wish Elrich would declare one day every week 100% inside dining, so the idiots could pack in and start creating some herd immunity for the rest of us.

We won't be dining inside anytime soon but will resume dining outside as soon as it's a little bit warmer (and I do mean actually outside - I'm not sitting inside one of those bubbles). We order takeout about once a week to support our local restaurants.

I do have friends and neighbors here in MoCo who have dined indoors and are psyched to resume.