
Starting next week, Nashville restaurants and bars must go back to operating at 50% of their capacities under the latest health order from the Metro Public Health Department.
Those establishments also have to offer last call and stop accepting new customers by 10 at night, to ensure they can close an hour later. Previous orders have allowed bars and restaurants to stay open until 11 p.m., but it wasn’t clear whether they had to stop serving then or shut their doors.
The White House Task Force says Nashville should reduce capacity to 25%, but Mayor John Cooper dismissed that idea last week. The city’s rule has been that restaurants must space customers out and barred them from having more than 100 customers on a floor, but had dropped the 50% maximum capacity rule earlier this month.