Tonight restaurants will be open an hour later than Governor Cuomo’s original 10 o’clock curfew but what does that really mean for local businesses?

“I don’t understand any of it really, I don’t.”

Renee Hauf co-owner of Stocious Sports Pub in Plattsburgh says the new curfew time doesn’t make much sense to her but after suffering a financial blow to her establishment during the initial curfew, she will take any time the state gives them. 

“We were doing pretty well after the initial re-opens from the major shutdown in the spring and then when he did the ten o’clock shutdown for the bars our business dropped severely. We lost about six thousand dollars a month.”

Stocious is not the only bar in the area being impacted. Just down the road Bobby’s Lounge owner Bobby Halls tells me it’s not the weeknights that is concerning him. 

“I don’t think the time makes a bit of a difference. What it does is on Friday and Saturday nights it hurts our business really bad not being able to stay open until two o’clock in the morning. People don’t come out. People are people and when they get accustomed to something they stay to it, they don’t even come out until nine o’clock. We’re really struggling because of this.”

Just a couple of blocks up, Head Chef for Buster’s Sports Bar and Grill Nicholas DiMartino says the new eleven o’clock curfew will not impact their business at all. The bar was one of the few that opened in the midst of COVID-19.

“It doesn’t affect us personally here at Buster’s due to the fact that we’ve set our hours based on being open on the pandemic starting in the pandemic. We look forward to it in the springtime as it will benefit us.”

The Governor’s office says the eleven P-M extension goes into effect on February fourteenth, and will remain in effect as long as hospitalization and positivity rates decline. 

The executive order from the Governor also includes gyms and fitness centers, casinos, billiard halls as well as any state liquor authority licensed establishment.