BC's restaurant industry reps celebrate end of masks, vaccine passports

Leaders in BC’s restaurant and bar industries are welcoming the province dropping mask and vaccine mandates, saying it’s a signal the pandemic is winding down that will enable businesses to plan for the future.

Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry announced today that the indoor mask mandate will end on March 11 and the vaccine passport system will expire on April 8.

“It’s huge. Unbelievably huge,” Jeff Guignard, executive director of the Alliance of Beverage Licensees, told Daily Hive. “It feels like we’re finally getting back to normal.”

Although nightclubs have been allowed to open since February, customers were still supposed to wear masks while inside — a rule that Guignard said was a “bit of a joke” to enforce.

“The customers were just done with it,” he said.

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According to Guignard, the majority of businesses in Vancouver’s hospitality industry have either been losing money, barely breaking even, or having a profit margin of less than 2% for the last two years. In addition, he said 15% of hospitality businesses didn’t make it through to the pandemic’s two-year anniversary.

“We were hit first, we were hit hardest, and we’ve always known we’ll be among the last to recover,” he said. “But with finally removing these last restrictions, it’s a mental shift. Everyone feels like we’re out of this.”

He was pleased BC lifted mask mandates ahead of St. Patrick’s Day — typically a huge sales day for bars and nightclubs that’s been dulled down over the last two years.

“We’re expecting a record St. Patrick’s Day this year,” he said. “It’s going to be a massive party.”

Ian Tostenson, president and CEO of the BC Restaurant and Food Services Association, said removing the mask mandate is also welcome news for many restaurant workers.

“We can show our smiling faces of hospitality and we can express those emotions we couldn’t with a mask on,” he said.

Tostenson thought a month-long lag between dropping masks and then allowing unvaccinated patrons once again was a smart move by the province to accommodate customers’ comfort levels. He added BC could only do this because the vaccination rate is so high — right now 91% of British Columbians 12 and up have two shots.

Now that the Omicron wave is subsiding, Tostenson thinks it’s time to move on from the vaccine passport system.

“As an industry, we really did agree that vaccination cards would be a good way to motivate people to get vaccinated,” Tostenson said. “I think we were responsible for getting a lot of people vaccinated because they wanted to keep going to restaurants.”