'Everything's moving forward': Restaurants, patrons delight in loosened health restrictions

A lively hustle and bustle has returned to many Winnipegrestaurants now that the province has loosened restrictions in its latest reopening move in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Saturday and Sunday saw an emerging buzz of people along east Corydon Avenue as they stopped in at Bar Italia and elsewhere for drinks and food and some long-awaited in-person socializing.

"Everybody's just happy to be outside or just out of the house," said Bar Italia managing partner Rhea Collison, who described the popular restaurant and bar's weekend as "flawless for the most part."

Gone as well is a rule forcing people to buy food if they wanted to imbibe.

That extra couple of hours of being open at night? It makes a difference, Collison said, and people are excited to get out past 10 p.m. which she joked was like having "school nights."

Her big hope is that summer weather extends into September and October to make up for lost revenue and that she won't have to police social distancing and health rules with patrons as much as she has to currently.

"Pretty over that part pretty tired of being the cranky mom," she said. "I was going to get a thing that calls me the no-fun police."

Jade Michael was one of a group of friends out "patio-hopping" Sunday afternoon along the Corydon strip. She told CBC it was good to be able to get together with friends and see people out and about "freeing" is how she worded it.

The 24-year-old said she felt no issues with safety, as tables on the patio were properly distanced.

Staff woes persist

On the back end of things, it's been a struggle to hire staff, Collison said. Many people who worked in the industry were stuck waiting to go back to work for so long that they found jobs in other sectors and aren't coming back, she said.

"I don't blame them, how long can you wait?" she said.

"We're still missing a couple of people, it's been tough."

Collison offered an example of how tight hiring has become, she suspects industry-wide. At this time last year, she put out a job ad which attracted 700 responses.

But this year, a recent one netted only 18, she said.

Nevertheless, things appear on a positive upswing, said Collison.

"We're really glad that everything's moving forward."