Next Phase for Restaurants... Outdoor Bubble Dining

As the weather turns colder, restaurants have had to adapt once again to be able to serve customers and keep the coronavirus from spreading. Enter... Bubble dining. Restaurants are setting up clear plastic domes and pods with tables set inside to keep customers safe and warm, but are they safe? Ventilation and cleanliness must still be maintained inside. Allyson Chiu, wellness reporter at the Washington Post, joins us for the new dining pods.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Monday, November nine. I'm Oscar Romeiras from the Daily
Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is Reopening America.
As the weather turns colder, restaurants have had to adapt
once again to be able to serve customers and keep
the coronavirus from spreading. Enter bubble dining. Restaurants are setting
up clear plastic domes and pods with tables set inside

(00:21):
to keep customers safe and warm, but are they safe?
Ventilation and cleanliness must still be maintained inside. Alison too Wellness,
reporter at the Washington Post, joins us for the new
dining pods. Thanks for joining us, Allison, Thanks som for
having me on. I've been pretty fascinated with the progression
of how restaurants have been adjusting to the pandemic. Early on,

(00:44):
obviously everything transition to outdoor dining, and then the big
question came was like, well, what are we gonna do
when it starts getting cold? What are we gonna do
when it starts raining. You know, you still need to
put people in certain places. And one of the new
things that have been popping up in certain areas now
you can call them bubble tents. Domes dining pods. But
there's these little clear iglue like things where they're setting

(01:07):
up outside of restaurants and then you know they're putting
the table and chairs inside. There's a lot of questions
are these things safe because now you're just creating an
enclosed area where diners are sitting. So Allison, you looked
into this, tell us a little bit more about it.
So the dining bubbles have become, like you said, just
increasingly popular, especially as the weather starts to turn colder

(01:28):
in some places across the US, you know, or even
in other countries. And like you said, the big concern
is whether it's safe to be grouping and people a
group of people inside an area where it's small and
the ventilation is not good essentially because it's a tense
And so what experts are saying is that any activity

(01:49):
that you do at this point in the pandemic that
is outside of your household, there's always to be some
level of risk, but there are a lot of things
you can do to mitigate or you know, reduce the
level of risk. And when it comes to pod dining,
while we've all established that environment is not ideal in
a pandemic, there are a number of things that you
can do to kind of make it safer for you

(02:10):
and the group of people that you'll be eating with.
So one of the main things, obviously is to really
be careful about who you're choosing to have the meal with. Obviously,
at this point, if someone in that tent has coronavirus,
the chance of you getting it, you know, might be
higher than say, if you're eating outdoors with that person.

(02:30):
From what the experts were telling you, there's these tradeoffs.
If you're in a small bubble situation, well you're protected
from outside people and they're protected from you. But that
tradeoff is, yes, you are spending more time in these tighter,
enclosed places, and one of the things that you mentioned
kind of evaluating who you're dining with. I guess the
ideal situation would be to go from your bubble, your

(02:51):
pandemic bubble, to dining in this bubble, dining sitting with
those same people. If you really want to be safe,
at least you all know you're following the rules exactly exactly,
and so the safest option is dining with either your
immediate household, because you're already exposed to those people in
your home setting, and so it would really be similar
to having a meal at home around the dining room table,

(03:12):
or like you said, you're grouping with friends who may
not be in your immediate household, but they're part of
your pandemic pot and you all agreed to be very
careful and so the chances of them having the virus
and chances you having the virus are are very low.
So those are all things you have to think about.
And then you're thinking about, well, what do I do
with sanitation and ventilation? And there are ways where you

(03:33):
can create better air flow in the tent, opening the windows,
open the doors. You know, just keep being mindful of
wearing your math when you're not eating, making sure you're
practicing good hand hiking, all the rules that have already
been kind of ingrained in us. At this point. The
ventilation thing is going to be a huge thing. One
of the experts said, if you're in one of these
bubbles that definitely shouldn't be feeling stuffy or like their stale,

(03:54):
and then that would be a sign right away to
change something. And as you mentioned, maybe open the little
zipper for the window or whatever it is. And these
bubbles pods are popping up in a lot of places
New York, Chicago. In Seattle, there was a restaurateur speaking
to a local news station saying, you know, they were
spending a lot of money on getting these but with
regards to the ventilation, they were, uh, you know, this

(04:17):
is gonna be hard to do. There's people waiting, but
they were spending ten or fifteen minutes in between parties
just to let it air out. So the difficult part
about the ventilation is there's really no guidance and there's
just hasn't been the research done to know exactly, you know,
what is the right amount of time that you need
to let these pods air out for. So I think
a lot of restaurants are having to try to figure

(04:38):
that out on their own and trying to figure out,
you know, what is that appropriate amount of time, and
there just isn't science on that yet. And cleaning and
cleaning to you clean the surface of the table, but
are people cleaning the whole inside of the dome? You know,
there's a lot of stuff that goes into it. And
like I said, I applaud these people for really getting
innovative with ways to figure it out, ways to keep

(05:00):
Peter there, but you're right, it always brings up more
questions and how on how you're going to actually do
it in practice, Right, there's a lot, there's a lot
of variability for sure. Well, we'll see how these bubble
pods work out, and we'll see how well they catch on.
You know, if there's a lot of success with them,
I'm sure you're gonna see them in a lot of
different places as it is, a lot of restaurants and

(05:20):
cities have even allowed everybody already to spread out in
the sidewalks and the streets in certain areas. So definitely
something that will be with us for a little while still.
Alison che Wellness, reporter at the Washington Post, thank you
very much for joining us. Thank you so much. I'm Oscarmeres,
and this has been reopening America. Don't forget that, says

(05:40):
big news stories. You can check me out on the
Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday. So follow us
on my Heart radio or wherever you get your podcasts.