CINCINNATI, Ohio—Restaurants across the state have come up with different ways to make sure all social distancing guidelines are followed. One restaurant owner installed software in his restaurant to keep track of his customers and how far away they are from each other.

Walking into a restaurant nowadays you don’t know what to expect. But here at Washington Platform in downtown Cincinnati, they’ve installed new software to make sure every patron is social distancing.

Washington Platform has been a Cincinnati staple for 34 years. And after closing for the past several months, its owner was looking forward to being back open.

“It’s actually been very exciting, it’s like opening a new restaurant again," Jon Diebold the owner and chef of Washington Platform said.

But the restaurant has never had to deal with circumstances like these. 

“Everybody’s doing things different ways," Diebold said. "We have the luxury, I guess, of being able to skip a table here or there to keep people six feet apart. We’re just asking people to work with us and we’ll work with them.”

The downtown restaurant was approached by a software developer to try out some new artificial intelligence to ensure everyone is keeping their distance.

“You don’t have to have someone assigned to keeping track of where people are and you can just display the results on a monitor and people can self police themselves," George Brunemann the Chief Technology Officer of Town Quality Sensors said.

Cameras inside the dining room show each customer on the floor plan and just how far away you are from someone else.

“If that dot says you’re more than six feet away, your icon is green," Brunemann said. "If you’re not more than six, it turns yellow and you have the number there that says o okay I’m four feet away from them now. If you stay that way for more than 30 seconds, the icon turns red.”

Don’t worry- the cameras are secure and all images are deleted. The data is then transferred to a spreadsheet to show how well customers and employees are social distancing.

While the software is still being perfected, it’s been a good start for patrons at Washington Platform to understand their surroundings.

“We’re still playing with it ourself," Dieblod said. "We’re watching it. It just really gives our customers an idea what social distancing is in a restaurant setting.”

“I don’t think people are used to the idea that I’ve got to stay away from people in the bar," Brunemann said. "And so it’s an easy way to gently remind you that you need to be aware of your surroundings.”