With devastating revenue losses mounting since the mid-March dining-in bans to help curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, Gov. Gavin Newsom provided re-opening guidelines for restaurants on Tuesday, May 12.

The bad news? No date has been set for Southern California restaurants to reopen. The good news? Newsom provided a 12-page document with incredibly specific safety guidelines to use when they do reopen.

Among them:

• Servers must wear masks

• Providing disposable menus and making menus available digitally so that customers can view on a personal electronic device, if possible

• No shared food condiments such as salt and pepper shakers, no shared bread baskets, salad bars or buffets

• No tableside food preparation and presentation, such as food item selection carts, conveyor belts or guacamole preparation

• No after-meal mints, candies, snacks, or toothpicks set out for customers, but they may be provided individually with the check

• No self-serve soda or frozen yogurt machines and no self-serve cutlery stations

• No communal tables where you dine with strangers

Many of the guidelines happen behind the scenes with recommendations for checking employees’ temperatures, rules about hand washing, gathering for breaks and the like. Local restaurateurs said they have already been following lots of these rules.

When dine-in service was no longer an option, Mel’s Drive-In locations in Hollywood, West Hollywood and Sherman Oaks reverted back to the ’50s with classic car hop service, said Colton Weiss, owner of Mel’s Drive-In and grandson to Mel himself.

“I wouldn’t say we’re doing the numbers we used to do, but we’re making the best of it,” he said.

Weiss said he and his staff are taking all of the suggested precautions including wearing masks, more vigorous sanitation and cleaning practices, including washing hands and wiping down often touched surfaces.

But the guidelines that created the most buzz were those that affect the customer experience.

Ed Lee, a co-founder of Wahoo’s Fish Tacos, with his brothers Wing Lam and Mingo Lee, said they’ve solved the mask issue with servers wearing clear plastic face shields. That way customers will still be able to see staff greet them with a friendly smile.

But the new rules about no self-serve means the salsa bars are history. “Yeah, no more salsa bars for awhile,” Ed Lee said.

As for chips and salsa there will be no help yourself station. It will all be brought to your table, Lee said. “Once it gets to the table, it’s up to you. Whether you want to share chips and salsa, French fries and onion rings. Oh my God. That whole thing is going to be a fiasco for a while until people get into a comfort zone…The public has some responsibility on their own to walk in with a mask, take off their mask, eat their lunch, put back on their mask, sanitize their hands, go back to the car.”

Some partitions between customers and staff will be required but JC Clow, founding partner of The Winery Restaurant & Wine Bar, which has locations in Tustin and Newport Beach, said his restaurants have already made plans to take it a step farther, installing clear dividers between booths and to separate tables.

Clow said they started looking into changes in March, knowing that state and local health officials would impose new measures

“We heard of a couple hotels in Vegas like the Wynn and Aria did this and we wanted to follow suit,” he said.

The Vineyard Rose Restaurant at South Coast Winery Resort & Spa in Temecula just reopened for takeout last week. Jeff Carter, Carter Hospitality’s president who oversees operations at the winery resorts, hoped customers would embrace the guidelines.

“Not all guests may feel the urgency to heed the guidelines, and may take issue with our employees enforcing them. We’re hopeful guests will be understanding and patient as we move through the re-opening phases.”

Ross Pangilinan, who runs ReMix Kitchen Bar, thinks many of the new guidelines are doable for his Long Beach restaurant, including reconfiguring his space so tables are six feet apart. “We would be at about 50% capacity but we’re going to do our best to be able to do it. But how long could we last doing that?” he said. “We still have rent to pay, insurance, taxes, all that stuff. It’s going to be hard; it’s going to be a challenge.”

For Ivan Vasquez, who owns a Oaxacan restaurant named Madre in Torrance and another one with the same name near Culver City, the new guidelines will mean added expenses during an already tough economic time. But still, he’s willing to do what it takes to fully open his doors again.

“I think anything is going to be better than what we have now,” he said.

Staff writers Richard Guzman and Kelli Skye Fadroski contributed to this story.