Scoops Dessert Bar will serve vegan and gluten-free boozy milkshakes, ice cream sandwiches, cupcakes and mini-doughnuts. (Credit score: Brittany Gumbiner)
When Brittany Gumbiner utilized for the final allow she wanted to get the money register ringing at Scoops Dessert Bar on the Gold Coast, she couldn’t consider what she heard when she went to Metropolis Corridor.
She might open immediately, with out ready one other two weeks for a well being inspection, thanks to new rules backed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot and handed by the Chicago Metropolis Council that took impact July 31.
“That was huge for me,” Gumbiner mentioned. “I needed to get these doorways open as quickly as attainable.”
Scoops Dessert Bar at 838 N. State St. is the primary restaurant in Chicago to open as a part of town’s Expedited Restaurant Licensing Pilot Program, which is designed to assist fill eating places that shut down when the COVID-19 pandemic swept town — and by no means reopened.
Scoops Dessert Bar is the primary in Chicago to supply an all-vegan, gluten-free menu, Gumbiner mentioned. The menu will function boozy milkshakes, ice cream sandwiches, cupcakes and mini-doughnuts.
It changed European-style gelato store Cafe Crèmerie, which is within the midst of relocating to River North, according to Eater.
Roughly half of Chicago’s 7,500 eating places closed both briefly or completely in 2020, based on the mayor’s workplace. The Federal Reserve estimated that roughly 44,000 restaurant employees within the Chicago space misplaced their jobs.
Two and a half months after Chicago officers lifted the final of the restrictions designed to cease the unfold of COVID-19, Chicago’s hospitality business has but to totally rebound, with receipts nonetheless lagging behind expectations and a surge within the confirmed variety of instances of COVID-19 pushed by the extra transmissible delta variant.
Ken Meyer, the performing commissioner of the Bureau of Enterprise Affairs and Shopper Safety, mentioned he was spurred to get the pilot program up and operating as quickly as attainable after seeing so many empty storefronts the place vibrant eating places as soon as drew a crowd.
“It’s our highest precedence,” Meyer mentioned. “COVID-19 could be very unpredictable. You must have persistence.”
The pilot program permits new licensed retail meals institutions to take over areas left vacant however nonetheless operational by their former tenants two weeks sooner than ordinary, Meyer mentioned.
The earlier restaurant would want to have handed a Chicago Division of Public Well being inspection on or after July 1, 2018, and have made no adjustments to structural, plumbing, air flow or electrical techniques for the brand new eatery to be eligible for this system and skip an preliminary well being inspection.
The brand new eatery shall be inspected inside six months to make sure it’s defending diners, Meyers mentioned.
“We don’t need to decelerate new companies however we additionally need everybody to be protected,” Meyers mentioned.
Gumbiner mentioned she was “extraordinarily assured” that the brand new guidelines would hold her diners secure.
“Town has been extraordinarily supportive,” Gumbiner mentioned. “It actually helped me get this enterprise up and operating at such a loopy time.”
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
