Rancho Santa Fe begins to reopen

As restaurants and retail stores can now open to serve customers in person, Dolce in Del Rayo Village was one of the first Rancho Santa Fe restaurants to welcome back diners on May 21.

Throughout the course of the pandemic, Dolce has done everything they can to stay afloat: Offering toilet paper with take-out orders, to-go cocktails and screening drive-in movies as well as creating a marketplace for essentials such as eggs, milk and bread.

Mille Fleurs in the RSF Village will re-open June 2 with a “new, more brasserie style format with new days and hours of operation.”

Restaurants have been allowed to re-open with guidelines that include temperature/symptom screening for employees, tables are required to be six feet apart or have barriers separating them, employees must wear facial coverings and customers must wear facial coverings except when seated. There is to be no self-service such as buffets, salad bars or soda machines and eateries are encouraged to expand outdoor seating.

On the retail side, customers are allowed in stores, including malls, with the requirements of daily employee screenings, facial coverings for customers and employees and social distancing.

With safety protocols in place, EDIT Consignment and Boutique in Del Rayo Village and Love Datsiya in the village opened their doors in time for Memorial Day weekend sales and The Country Friends’ consignment shop in the village reopened on May 26.

As more places open to the public, the county stresses that it remains important for people to continue taking precautions to avoid getting and spreading COVID-19.

“Dining out and shopping must be done safely as crowded places increase the risk of exposure to COVID-19,” Dr. Wilma Wooten, San Diego County’s public health officer, said. “People should continue wearing a face-covering in public, maintain their distance from others, avoid touching their face and wash their hands frequently.”

Memorial Day also brought new guidance from the state for the opening of houses of worship. As of May 27, the county will allow places of worship to reopen for small crowds—the guidance indicates places of worship should be open at 25 percent of a building’s maximum capacity or 100 worshipers, whichever is smaller.

The guidance also suggests that people bring their own materials, such as Bibles, and forgo choirs. The state strongly recommends that places of worship continue to keep their services online, noting that even with social distancing, gathering with people outside one’s immediate household “carries a relatively higher risk for widespread transmission of the COVID-19 virus.”

On May 26, the county has also allowed the reopening of barbershops and hair salons.

Despite some restrictions being lifted, as of press time the state has not cleared the following businesses or activities for reopening: hotels and Airbnb (except to serve essential workers), nail salons, and gyms and fitness centers.