Serving alcohol on the streets of SLO County is a first step. Here’s what should happen next

Picture this: In a week or two, you’re sitting at a table outside your newly reopened, favorite restaurant, enjoying a gourmet meal and celebrating with a glass of fine ... water?

Well, thanks to the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control that doesn’t have to be the case.

The often-maligned state agency is allowing restaurants that expand meal service beyond their normal footprint — to sidewalks, parking lots and streets, for instance — to serve alcohol in those makeshift dining spaces. That’s provided they already have a liquor license.

The ABC’s regulatory relief measure applies only to counties that have been granted state permission to move ahead on reopening — a designation San Luis Obispo County expects to receive soon.

Restaurants will be required to provide the ABC with documentation, including diagrams of the proposed, temporary dining areas and a description of barriers that will be used to maintain control of the area.

There’s also a $100 application fee.

The blessing from the ABC may seem like a minor technicality, but it’s an example of the intricacies that confront business owners as they prepare to reopen in the time of coronavirus.

Restaurants face a particular set of challenges, given that they will almost certainly have to remove some indoor tables to meet social distancing requirements. That’s going to hurt.

“If the industry norm is 35% less tables, that’s going to disrupt everything,” Paso Robles restaurant owner Debbie Thomas told Tribune reporter Kaytlyn Leslie. “If we could open up 100%, it would be one thing, but you know we won’t be able to do that.”

To compensate for the lost tables — and the revenue they generate — many restaurants are looking at setting up sit-down service outside, in spaces that once would have been considered off-limits for dining.

Gretchen LeMiere, owner of Taste in San Luis Obispo, told The Tribune she’s asked the city for permission to add tables in the parking lot of the popular Broad Street restaurant.

Thomas, the owner of Thomas Hill Organics, has been working with the city of Paso Robles to explore other ways to help restaurants, such as setting up dining parklets — small seating areas that are typically adjacent to sidewalks, and separated from traffic by planters or other barriers.

Some cities are looking to close entire streets to allow outdoor dining and recreation. Think how fantastic that might be in SLO or Paso or Pismo.

Without the ability to serve alcohol in these new dining spaces, though, the odds of success are considerably lower.

For that, raise a glass to the ABC — especially since this isn’t the first time the agency has moved quickly to loosen restrictions since the coronavirus crisis began.

It also granted temporary relief to allow free delivery of alcohol; to-go sales of cocktails; drive-through window transactions; and the use of high-proof spirits for manufacturing disinfectants, among others.

The only downside to this effort?

It appears the state doesn’t want us to get too used to any of those conveniences; they’re temporary and, in ABC speak “may be withdrawn by the department at any time.”

But why? It would be wonderful if some of the lasting “new normals” out of coronavirus were actually enjoyable lifestyle improvements and not merely mask mandates and a hand sanitizer dispenser in every doorway.

An expansion of street cafes that offer full beverage service could be one of those improvements. They have huge appeal in Europe and elsewhere around the world, after all.

If properly regulated and managed, there’s no reason they wouldn’t succeed here as well.

If we every needed motivation to make this happen, to turn lemons into limoncello so to speak, now is the time.