With several communities in the Greater Boston area now requiring both restaurant workers and customers to wear masks or other forms of protective face coverings, there can be some confusion as to the exact guidelines from place to place, especially for folks who decide to go to another city or town to get takeout food.
As of this writing, both employees of dining spots and patrons in such cities and towns as Beverly, Brookline, Medford, Salem, and Swampscott are either required to cover up their noses and mouths when entering a dining establishment or soon will be (and some communities such as Arlington and Lynn don't even allow customers inside restaurants now), while the state guidelines are for customers to be encouraged to wear masks or other face coverings when walking into a place to pick up food. However, because the guidelines for the state of Massachusetts only advise people to wear masks when in public areas, it can be difficult to know exactly what to do if you don't know the specific guidelines for a given community, which means if you order food to pick up at a restaurant in a neighboring city or town, it is possible that they won't allow you inside without a face covering.
So what does this all mean for diners? If you're calling your order in to a place for pickup, the obvious answer is to ask what the policy is, and if there is a strict face-covering policy and you don't have a mask, ask if they can do curbside pickup. If you're ordering online, it gets more difficult unless you call before ordering online, and if you don't have a mask and the restaurant doesn't do curbside pickup, you may actually be out of luck and have to go elsewhere.
For now, it seems that the easiest option is to have a mask or covering with you just in case, even if it's just a scarf or a turtleneck since it would be for just a brief amount of time. And perhaps Governor Charlie Baker might ultimately end the confusion by ordering that all people in the Commonwealth who go inside public spaces such as restaurants wear protective face coverings, but it remains to be seen as to whether he actually does that, so stay tuned.
by Marc Hurwitz (Also follow us on Twitter at @hiddenboston)
[A related post from our sister site (Boston's Hidden Restaurants): List of Restaurant Closings and Openings in the Boston Area]
