The Bayou, the Salt Lake City bar and restaurant that weathered protests for requiring customers to show proof of a COVID-19 vaccination, is lifting that restriction after nearly a year.
“When we first reopened The Bayou last May, we were clear about the metrics we were using when making our vaccine requirement decisions,” the restaurant wrote Tuesday on its Twitter feed. “Eleven months later, we have finally reached the metrics we set for reassessing our requirement.”
The bar’s main metric, according to its website, an infection risk of under 10% for groups of 50 or more, according to Georgia Tech’s Applied BioInformatics Lab risk tool. That metric, as of Tuesday, came in at 9% for Salt Lake County.
According to the Utah Department of Health’s data dashboard, as of Tuesday, 67.1% of Salt Lake County residents have been fully vaccinated.
“We know that many may be upset at us for removing our requirement and understand that,” the restaurant continued on its Twitter feet. “However, at every point we have tried to follow the best science available and will continue to do so.”
The bulk of the responses to Tuesday’s tweets were supportive. There were a few exceptions, like the person who wrote, “Right before the next wave. Y’all aren’t bright.”
“If you had read our page you would realize that we are well aware of BA.2 variant and will be continually monitoring the situation,” The Bayou replied. “If you had read our page you would realize that we are utilizing multiple metrics, including sewage data, which will provide early warnings.”
The Bayou, like most bars and restaurants, closed when the COVID-19 pandemic began — and when they reopened, at first they only served carry-out orders.
Owner Mark Alston, in an op-ed that ran in The Salt Lake Tribune in January 2022, wrote, “we didn’t reopen our dine-in until our staff and customers could be fully vaccinated and then we required everyone in the building to be fully vaccinated.”
Just masking up in a restaurant, only to take off the mask while eating, was “theater,” Alston told Tribune columnist Robert Gehrke last May. “Having everyone have their vaccine isn’t theater.”
The Bayou’s announcement in May was met with angry responses from right-wing anti-vax groups online.
“Those guys freaked out and were just literally outraged and insane,” Alston told Gehrke. “They suggested all sorts of violent things, wishing death on us and everyone we know, wishing us to fail miserably.”
Despite lifting its own vaccination requirement, The Bayou is adamantly pro-vaccine. On its COVID-19 page, the restaurant encouraged people to be vaccinated and boosted, noting that those who are unvaccinated “are 10 times more likely to die than a boosted person, 5 times more likely to end up in the hospital and 2 times more likely to test positive.”
The bar’s website also notes, cheekily, that “we continue to discriminate against people under 21 years old and still require ‘papers’ (drivers license or passport) for everyone due to our liquor license.”
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