The owner of one of Liverpool’s most popular restaurants says she won’t be giving up “without a fight” after the coronavirus pandemic and ongoing cost of living crisis continue to threaten her business.
Like many others, Candice Fonseca, the owner of Delifonseca on Brunswick Way, was forced to adapt her business when the hospitality industry was in flux during lockdown - and no sooner had she re-opened than the cost of living crisis hit.
Candice says Delifonseca completely changed the way it worked to keep serving customers during the coronavirus pandemic - and to survive. During lockdown, the popular venue remained dedicated to delivering food across the city, started offering customers its chef-prepared meals, as well as its entire food hall product range, and even converted its online shop to enable customers to browse and purchase some of the restaurant’s most popular products, which could be delivered or collected contact-free.
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While the pandemic raged, Candice worried she would lose the business but instead of letting it stop her, she decided to dive head first into making changes - including adding a large extension to the venue.
According to Candice, once the new setup was underway during lockdown, things moved quite quickly because unlike many other businesses, Delifonseca isn’t just a restaurant - it has a food hall, a butchers and a website, which allowed people to get hold of essentials when they needed it most.
The business quickly managed to change direction - it wasn’t plain sailing however, the business was still in trouble. Despite being able to remain somewhat functional, Delifonseca’s restaurant was sitting empty and the rules on which businesses could be open or closed kept changing.
She said: “A lot of people with businesses are optimistic, passionate about them. It’s a personal thing - when these things happen you take them personally, never mind the fact you might lose your business or your house. In one sense as a small business we can change quickly but we are exhausted and it’s been a lot of hard work.”
Once things opened back up again after lockdown and life got back to ‘normal’, many would have expected things to bounce right back. However, Candice says Delifonseca has continued to face a number of challenges.
These included its older, more experienced chefs moving on with no one to replace them and a lack of training for the staff that were available - what Candice called a “perfect storm”. Instead, Candice has had to change Delifonseca’s opening times as she “adapts to reality” and examines “every little thing” as she says it has become easy to make a costly mistake.
Candice said: “Businesses have to tread a fine line, we’ve had to make changes, even down to swapping things out on the menu because they’ve doubled in price to buy in, which means we’d have to put our prices up. So it’s all about thinking ‘well we can’t serve that anymore because we don’t want to ask people to pay that price’.
“You have to be clever about it, don’t compromise on quality but you can change which cuts of meat you serve. We’ve always had a changing menu, you just have to get creative.”
When Candice took a step back and looked at the past two years, she said she felt like she had been “lurching from crisis to crisis” and that keeping abreast of everything can often “feel like you’re battered”.
However, Candice says her customers have been understanding about the changes. She added: “Customers now understand because they hear on the news about cost of living, but at first after lockdown, they were quite unrealistic about what to expect. They wanted everything to go back to normal
“I don’t think we’ve ever felt like we’re back on our feet and it would be easy to dwell on the negative, but at the same time you’ve got to be positive. The only way is to work through this and work hard.
“We’ve never had normal in the new restaurant but we’ve never got into the rhythm. We've never had a complete year in this restaurant. It’s been very stop/start. It’s nice to be able to focus on the running of the business instead of the problems.
“I’m not gonna give up without a fight. You’ve just got to try and keep your chin up, hopefully we’ll still be here and people will still support us."
Delifonseca recently launched a series of wine and food tasting evenings in its newly transformed restaurant. Candice said: “We used to have a monthly wine club when we were based on Stanley Street. We’re bringing them back now we have the space to do them. The new extension has given us the room.
“We’re about celebrating produce and products and producers and undying love of food. Our staff and customers share that passion.”
Delifonseca is based at Brunswick Way, Liverpool, L3 4BN. For more information about Delifonseca and its new events, click here .
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