0820_AUG Comstock's Magazine 0820 August | Page 22

TASTE
Resetting in Historic Folsom
The return of dining is important to the vitality
of Sutter Street — but challenges exist
BY Jennifer Fergesen PHOTOS BY Debbie Cunningham
Owners John and Tahni Voelz opened
Reset: Cafe By Day in Folsom on March 9.
Reset: Cafe By Day opened on
Folsom’s historic Sutter Street on
the morning of March 9, after a
year preparing for its daily metamorphosis.
At 4 p.m., the staff changed their
uniforms and flipped the mixed-media
art on the walls to reveal surrealistic
paintings: an owl in a top hat here, a koi
in a coffee cup there. The music shifted
from acoustic tunes to jazz, the sconces
flickered like candles, and hidden fixtures
illuminated the ceiling in a cobalt blue
that matched the banquettes — all to
ease the cafe’s transition into its evening
identity as a beer and wine bar.
Less than a week later, Reset went
through a different kind of transformation.
On March 15, Gov. Gavin Newsom
directed all bars and nightclubs in
California to close to slow the spread
of COVID-19, and Reset followed suit
(though it is officially classified as a
restaurant). Then, on March 19, the
governor issued a statewide stay-at-home
order and banned dine-in service, pushing
the roughly two-dozen dining options
in Folsom’s historic district into limbo.
While the order successfully reduced
the infection rate, its consequences on
the restaurant industry are dire. After
rising steadily for decades, national
restaurant sales fell off a cliff between
March and April, undoing more than 15
years of growth in a month, according to
Restaurant Business magazine. But those
charts don’t show the consequences of
restaurants’ woes on the businesses and
neighborhoods that surround them.
Historic downtown districts like
Folsom’s Sutter Street bank on their
22 comstocksmag.com | August 2020