Durban - IT has been nearly a month since the restaurant industry took to the streets across South Africa to highlight their hardship during the national lockdown.
Durban streets like Florida and Lighthouse roads have lost their buzz, especially with the banning of liquor sales and a curfew in place.
Yesterday, restaurant owners, managers and the hospitality industry were overjoyed to be trading in alcoholic beverages again. They believed that although the financial damage had been done, level 2 of the national lockdown allowed them to start rejuvenating their restaurants.
Duncan Heafield, the Hospitality, Entertainment, Leisure Industries of SA (Helisa) chairperson, said it welcomed the unbanning of alcohol sales in restaurants and hospitality institutions. However, there were limitations when it came to only 50 patrons being allowed in at a time. He believed this would change in level 1 of the lockdown.
“We also believe that giving restaurants the custodianship of alcohol during the periods of Thursday to Sunday will greatly help restaurants recoup a lot of the revenue that they lost previously by being closed during this period of time,” said Heafield.
Butcher Boys uMhlanga and Florida Road partner Derryck Myers said they spent most of levels 5, 4 and 3 of the lockdown closed, except for opening once, the first weekend in July in uMhlanga, without alcohol.
“We opened the two subsequent weekends and it was fair, it wasn’t great. When people go for dinner, they want to have a bottle of wine or a beer, to drink with their meals. It was quite slow. The lunches were normal but the nights were very quiet.
“Now we open tomorrow, both stores. We’re just waiting for stock to come in and hopefully we get back to some normality. I don’t think it’ll be as it was before, I think it will take us six to 12 months to get to where we were before depending on the spread of the virus,” said Myers.
Myers said the firm had paid its staff throughout the lockdown and had not retrenched anyone.
“We’re looking forward to tomorrow (Wednesday) and onwards, hopefully things will improve,” said Myers.
Lord Prawn uMhlanga manager Gerhard Rothmann said the restaurant was at breaking point but loyal customers kept them going. If not, he would have had to retrench 21 staff and close a restaurant that had been going for 45 years.
“We’re so glad we had loyal customers that supported us. We had a lot of takeaways, they supported us through the apps and supported us directly. We’re very grateful for that.”
He said although alcohol could be sold again, his delivery had not yet arrived yesterday. However, he still had some left over from before the liquor ban was imposed again.
Daily News