ORLANDO, Fla. — Monday marks the one week mark since the state gave bars the green light to reopen.

What You Need To Know

  • Some downtown Orlando bars report crowds lining up this weekend

  • Owners of The Beacham, The Social and others say people are following the rules better

  • Bars allowed seated-service only, can only seat to 50% capacity

It’s brought a big sense of relief for business owners who are now able to bring back employees and start recuperating losses brought on by the months-long closures.

The owners of popular downtown Orlando venues like The Beacham and Jungle Room say they’re seeing a lot of people wanting to come in for a drink. Instead of the roughly 1,200 people they used to fit inside Beacham, with reopening restrictions for seated-service only, now they can fit around 380 people and it didn’t take long before seats were filled this weekend.

“The demand is extremely high. Everybody wants to get in,” said John SanFelippo, co-owner The Beacham, The Social and other bars around downtown.

Rainy weather this past weekend didn’t dampen spirits for those ready to revisit bars. SanFelippo said without enough socially distanced seated spots to go around, they were turning people away.

“Pretty much within an hour, we had lines starting to form and we had to tell people, you’re not going to get in, you know, we’re at capacity,” SanFelippo said.

Walking in, bar goers will get a card clearly laying out the state mask and reopening guidelines. Inside, employees working as social distancing monitors help make sure people follow those rules.

“By day three, we figured out that we would just simply ask people that, you know, we’ve been unemployed for six months and please follow these state guidelines so you can keep coming back and we can stay in business and the staff can continue to make money. That seemed to work the best,” SanFelippo said.

That customer compliance was a big worry for them and other downtown bars with reopening.  So far, SanFelippo said bar goers are being understanding about the rules.

“I think being closed as long as we were, everybody respects the guidelines a lot better this time around and understands that if they don’t follow them, there’s a possibility we could get shut down again,” he said.

And while he’s grateful to see customers coming back, SanFelippo said the best part for him has been welcoming back his employees.

“It’s exciting to help people get back to work, try to find some sort of normal and start giving out paychecks again,” SanFelippo said.