THE GIST
This past weekend, a small Maine brewpub thrust itself into the national spotlight amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Bethel, Maine’s Sunday River Brewing Company emphatically defied Governor Janet Mills’ stay-at-home order by opening for dine-in business Friday, May 1. Mills and the state’s Department of Economic and Community Development announced April 28 that the earliest restaurants and breweries could reopen to dine-in customers is June 1. Under Maine law, brewpubs are permitted to sell to-go food and beer in the interim.
Sunday River’s owner Rick Savage opened the brewpub’s dining room Friday to make a statement about his opposition to Mills’ order, which he calls “unconstitutional” and harmful to businesses. Savage appeared on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on April 30 to publicize the move, telling Carlson in part: “I could put people at six-foot spacing everywhere and get open back up for business. […] I’m going to challenge the state to come and see, ‘Hey, this is what we’re doing. If you don’t like it, take me to court.’”
Sunday River immediately became a flashpoint for critics and supporters alike, and a symbol of a national debate over how and when to reopen businesses. On May 1, lines of customers formed outside the brewpub in what News Center Maine reporter Hannah Dineen described as “more than a lunch rush, it’s a protest.”
On May 2, Savage was greeted like a celebrity at a ReOpen Maine rally outside the State House in Augusta, Maine. At the rally, he said he’d raised $100,000, which he plans to use to sue the state for “violating our rights.” A GoFundMe posted on the brewery’s Facebook page has raised more than $95,000 as of May 5.
The state’s Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages and Lottery Operations revoked Sunday River’s health license on Friday afternoon, though The Sun Journal reports the Oxford County Sheriff is unlikely to press criminal charges. The brewery cannot legally operate without this license. A staff member who answered the brewery’s phone on May 4 says the business was closed Monday, but plans to be open May 5.
WHY IT MATTERS
This small brewery’s divisive actions are a result of piecemeal and fiercely contentious reopening procedures that vary from city to city and state to state. Individual businesses are forced to take sides: some are unwilling to reopen until they can implement adequate safety measures (whatever those may be), while others say reopening restrictions are an example of government overreach. With businesses and lives on the line, an owner’s decision about when to reopen inevitably becomes a political one. It’s a significant shift from where many breweries stood before COVID-19, when they found comfort and support in publicly expressing social stances.
Now, breweries find themselves in an unfamiliar bind. Contemporary craft breweries bill themselves as open spaces not only for beer consumption but for events, meetings, and community gatherings. Suddenly, those same taprooms are being asked to decide between that identity and the possibility that opening for business could further spread a deadly disease.
A minority of them, however, dismiss the latter concern. Sunday River has not been the only business to champion the reopening cause: businesses in Arizona, Washington, California, and elsewhere have pledged to defy their states’ mandated closures. Half the states in the U.S. eased some restrictions on businesses over the weekend, heralding it as a return to normalcy. A new Axios-Ipsos survey released May 5 shows Americans are less concerned now than they were in early April about leaving their homes and interacting with groups. Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s models show a doubling of the daily death rate from COVID-19 by June.
Small businesses are caught in the middle. The hospitality industry is especially vulnerable, as restaurants and bars are by nature places where people congregate close together. These companies operate on thin margins, and are worried that even if they do reopen, customers won’t immediately feel safe returning. Many doubt they can even survive at the 25% or 50% operating capacities some states have mandated. Again, the decision to reopen under such restrictions falls to each owner.
“No one will tell you we could sustain this [25%] capacity for very long,” Emily Knight, CEO of the Texas Restaurant Association, told Restaurant Business. “I think it’s going to come down to a restaurant-by-restaurant decision.”
The calculus—balancing customers’ and employees’ health, the desire to rehire staff, mounting bills, and the need for potential revenues—is delicate.
Peter Jensen Bissell, co-founder of Portland, Maine’s Bissell Brothers Brewing Company, expressed his frustration over this catch-22 in a Twitter thread that read, in part: “Getting sick of this stance that small business owners are akin to Joseph Stalin for even expressing concern over this reopening plan. […] We have employees that are depending on us for their own livelihoods, and for us to make the right choices (as well as actually be able to hire them back) not to mention ALL OUR BILLS ARE STILL DUE EACH MONTH.”
More than 100 restaurants in Georgia placed a full-page ad in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution April 28 explaining that they’re not yet comfortable reopening, though they could legally do so under Governor Brian Kemp’s order allowing restaurants to reopen that day. Restaurateur Ryan Pernice, who wrote the statement, told CNN it shouldn’t be interpreted as partisan. He says the letter wasn’t intended to admonish the governor or any businesses that do choose to reopen. The vocal minority staging reopening demonstrations across the country likely won’t accept that stance as neutral.
Now, individual business owners are making weighty moral and economic decisions largely on their own. And they’re doing so in an environment where information changes frequently as state and federal guidelines shift based on weekly or daily COVID-19 case loads.
Brewers’ guilds and other professional organizations can offer some advisory guidance, but it’s just that. Asked about Sunday River’s choice to reopen, Sean Sullivan, executive director of the Maine Brewers’ Guild, says it has “encouraged all member breweries to follow CDC guidelines and guidance issued by Governor Mills.” The guild is now in the process of surveying members to solicit ideas about best reopening practices. It is also meeting with the state’s Department of Economic and Community Development to create a brewery-specific reopening checklist that provides its members “with best chances for success.” Sullivan acknowledges this will be a challenge given breweries’ variety of business models, building sizes, and layouts.
Armed with only general orders issued by the governor, the industry is doing its best to guide itself. Concerns about safety and finances are top of mind, but it’s also impossible to ignore the political ramifications of a reopening timeline.
“Some states, I think, frankly, aren't going fast enough,” President Donald Trump said during a Fox News appearance on Sunday, May 3, painting governors’ decisions to extend social-distancing measures as partisan obstinance.
Such rhetoric serves to inflame passions on both sides of the political chessboard, with small businesses acting as pawns in the larger debate.
“When the president himself gets involved in deeply divisive cultural-political issues and won't let them go, he forces people to take into consideration actions they never would have thought about before,” David Faris, an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and host of the Electing to Drink podcast, told Good Beer Hunting in November 2019.
Faris may as well have been talking about our current moment, with Sunday River Brewing as exhibit A.
Words by Kate Bernot