Page 16 - BusinessWest June 9, 2021
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The Federal Restaurant Group
At These Eateries, Guests Will Determine Pace of Reopening
Ralph Santaniello says he’s read the lan- guage contained in Gov. Charlie Baker’s decision to bring the state into the final
stage of his reopening plan at least a dozen times.
And each time, he came away with the con- clusion that the phrase ‘no restrictions’ means ... well, no restrictions.
“That means no more mask requirements,
“We’re not just going to turn on the faucet right away and have everything back to normal day one — the guests are going to decide things.”
no more tables being six feet apart, no barri- ers, no restrictions on capacity,” said Santani- ello, director of Operations for the Federal Res- taurant Group, which includes the Federal in Agawam, Vinted in West Hartford, and Posto in Longmeadow.
But just because it’s there in black and white doesn’t mean this restaurant group has to go as
far and especially as fast (the date for full reopen- ing was moved from Aug. 1 to May 29, as everyone knows by now) as the governor says it can.
And it won’t.
Indeed, Santaniello
— several times, in fact — said it will be custom- ers, the buying public, and not the governor who ultimately determines the pace at which these res- taurants work their way back to where they were in the winter of 2020, before COVID-19 reached Western Mass.
“We’re not just going
to turn on the faucet right
away and have every-
thing back to normal
day one — the guests are
going to decide things,”
he noted. “What we’ll
probably do is eliminate the barriers and slowly introduce more seating so the guests get com- fortable. We’ll start to ramp up and ease our way back and see how things go.”
      Ralph Santaniello says his customers, and not the governor, will determine how quickly and how profoundly he increases capacity at the venues within the Federal Restaurant Group.
 For example, while the requirement that tables be six feet
apart has been lifted, the three res-
The Federal
Continued on page 17
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