Are restaurants a luxury or a necessity?
Enter the age of pandemics. As we battle new variants, COVID-19 vaccines may well be here to stay - where getting inoculated against the coronavirus may turn out to be an annual health measure requiring us to get a fresh jab every year. Consequently, not only should we concentrate on the short term (now), but look towards a long haul (future).
Every business including those in hospitality should develop plans and blueprints that go beyond its own profitability. We need to seriously begin thinking on how our contribution benefits economies and protects jobs whilst continually reassuring both the public and employees, who are now acutely aware about the disease, that we are very much an integral part of the ‘new’ normal.
Consider restaurants for example. Initially, as with everyone else who faced the economic whack from COVID-19, it was a case of uncertainty and hope. Hope that this will all quickly go away. However, as the number of diners coming through the doors dwindled overnight to zero, that uncertainty gave way to an enormous fear of staying in business. Restaurant operators soon began to switch from sit-down to take-away and/or deliveries; others stuck it out with their original model of operation – nervously assessing all the time, how the pandemic was affecting their business.
Many businesses never recovered from the first wave of COVID-19, and, after repeated forced closure amid mandatory lockdowns…closed shop. Those who stayed afloat somehow eventually faced a critical choice. Adapt to the ‘new’ normal or simply perish.
Measures, such as sanitising surfaces, reduced table capacity to ensure social distancing, shortened operating hours, introducing single-use and touchless technology whilst implementing mask policies to alleviate customer concerns, were the initial raft of safety precautions that restaurant operators bought to the table.
Then there were those who felt that simply taking the abovementioned precautions were not enough – they went the extra yard to let their customers know about these actions when sending out the “we are now open for business” message. Well and good. But, is getting the word out to their guests about the enhanced safety measures, and, that they are back in business, doing enough?
Restaurateurs must let the public know that operating a restaurant (i.e. the good ones), makes certain that the streets appear mostly clean; they employ not only people in the industry (direct) but several others (indirectly), including supporting the agricultural system, which farmers most need.
Pre- COVID-19, a restaurant (where the pendulum of opinion swung towards been a luxury), that opened and stayed open - was considered good. If it closed, it ran a bad operation. But post-COVID-19 this is no longer the case. Many businesses without the financial resources to survive another ‘lock down’ were forced to close.
Post-COVID-19 the view of a restaurant as merely a luxury is perhaps changing. The pandemic may well have swung that pendulum towards seeing restaurants as a necessity – one that supports the economy.
Shafeek Wahab – Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Ex-hotelier.
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