California is starting to look the closest it has to normal in more than a year.
With Governor Gavin Newsom easing restrictions on masks and capacity limits, business owners are now navigating the reopening process.
"They're all very excited,” said Aubrey Pyle, owner of Lousia’s Place in Downtown San Luis Obispo, regarding changes to mask requirements. “In the service industry, you're on your feet, you're running. It gets really hard to breathe. It's hard for the customers to hear us when they're taking our orders, so we’re very excited.”
Downtown business owners KSBY spoke with Monday had slightly different strategies for the state’s reopening. At Louisa's Place, Pyle says they're all vaccinated so they won't be wearing a mask
"Can't wait to get back to full capacity and mostly we're excited to be showing people our smiling faces again,” she said.
But at Kin Coffee Bar, things will be a little different.
"I have to watch out for my employees and how they feel and though we're all very excited to open up and be like, mask-less, a lot of our employees are still really wanting to make sure that we're safe about it,” said Julian Contreras, Kin Coffee Bar owner.
Both places will still have some COVID-19 precautions in place.
"Kind of like chatted amongst each other and we're going to continue to wear masks for a little bit. I guess to just see how people feel about us doing that right away. At the same time, we're going to allow customers to flow they want that they want to,” Contreras said.
Pyle added, "We still are kind of social distancing our tables. We're making sure people aren't sitting right up against each other at the counter. We're much more aware of our sanitation measures. We'll still continue with all of the COVID sanitation measures with cleaning the tables and all that kind of stuff."
Newsom’s reopening plan does relax quite a few restrictions, but for mask wearing, it does defer to guidance from the CDC.
Some of the guidance depends on whether a person is vaccinated or not.
