Rochester, N.Y. — Bar and restaurant owners are being told to shape up and follow the rules of reopening – or risk losing their liquor license.
“So, I just wanted to make sure they knew the laws and rules,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday. “I wanted them to make sure that they knew that the state was going to be sending out inspectors.”
The move follows more than 25,000 citizen complaints that many are not following the new guidelines, with a handful of those complaints coming from Monroe County.
Cuomo said if the issues persist, the phased reopening could be slowed or stopped altogether.
“It’s not really a huge issue for us personally because we’re more of a neighborhood bar,” said Marcus Lenear, co-owner of The Blossom Road Pub in Rochester.
Lenear says owning a bar was a lifelong dream: a crowded room where “everybody knows your name” and friends bend an elbow and chat about their day.
Now, he’s more focused on the safety of his patrons and following the rules of phase three.
“We haven’t really had to deal with that up until this point, but we are aware of it,” said Lenear.
With indoor dining reintroduced last Friday, bars and restaurants have had to cut their occupancy in half.
“This Friday, I’m going to be pretty vigilant making sure we keep that number pretty low,” Cuomo said.
Following the slew of recent complaints, the governor said the state liquor authority will be on the lookout, doing the code enforce the job normally handlers on the local level.
Irondequoit Town Supervisor Dave Seeley says when the state went on PAUSE, job to educate and enforce.
“For the most part, the compliance – once we did the education – was actually pretty solid,” said Seeley.
With more businesses opening back up, Seeley says they don’t have enough staff to keep up the same effort.
“Certainly, if it gets to a point in time when the state wants to ask for our help, we will do everything we can,” he said. “Again, our goal is to be an educator.”
Cuomo said the majority of the complaints come from Manhattan and the Hamptons.