Springtime is generally boom time for the hospitality industry. The four-day weekend of Easter, plus Mother’s Day and two bank holidays in May, see many people celebrating with meals out. But this year in March, just as restaurants and bars began to get really busy, Covid-19 took hold.
“We were on the crest of a wave,” says Paul Elgee, director of Myra’s Kaiseki, a restaurant in Dorchester. “We were fully booked, and with stock in ready for a big weekend, then we were told we needed to shut. The closure of the restaurant couldn’t have come at a worse time.”
As the pandemic swept through China, then Europe, at the start of 2020, there was confusion in the UK about the virus and the impact it would have. On 16 March, the prime minister simply advised the country to “avoid pubs, clubs, theatres and other social venues”. It wasn’t until a week later that lockdown was put into place, meaning venues such as Myra’s Kaiseki were forced to bring down the shutters.
This small, fine-dining Japanese restaurant is part of an industry that before the outbreak of Covid-19 was valued at £72bn in the UK. Though the closures were unavoidable, the process of doing so had the potential to devastate the trade’s workforce.
“We opened the family-run restaurant in 2016 and we’ve built it up from nothing,” says Elgee, who employs four people alongside his wife Myra, the chef. “When you’re faced with closure, it’s like a dark cloud. But it was very important to us to retain our staff. It takes several years to build up a team of people you can trust and rely on – you can’t replace people who have contributed a lot to the business. They aren’t just another number to us, they are like family. They have to be looked after.”
Rishi Sunak, the chancellor of the exchequer, subsequently announced a range of measures for UK businesses and workers to protect them during the economic emergency. The Small Business Grant Fund (SBGF) provides small businesses with grants of up to £10,000, while the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) enables employees to be put on furlough while allowing employers to apply for a government grant that covers 80% of their usual wage, capped at £2,500 a month.
Elgee’s first port of call was the team running Dorchester Business Improvement District, who, along with his accountants, suggested he apply for an SBGF through Dorset county council. The restaurant was awarded the full £10,000 within a week.
“The grant gave us enough space to breathe so we could search for that silver lining and figure out what we could do in the circumstances. It also helped to tie things up with our suppliers and our staff, so we could close up in good order,” he says.
They were then able to furlough two of their staff through the CJRS. Of utmost importance to Elgee was being able to support his staff. “They will be secure and ready to come back when we can reopen,” he says.
“We didn’t feel isolated with the problem, which was really important,” he adds. “We were kept very well informed.”
But business owners – and the people who work in these bars, cafes and restaurants – are aware that there’s no quick fix for the effects of the pandemic on their trade, and that things are still precarious.
The job retention scheme has now been extended until the end of October, which has come as a relief to Elgee. “As far as the restaurant industry is concerned, we can’t expect to recover immediately in July. It will take us a while to pick up again,” he says.
Elgee says he’s fortunate to have the support of his landlord, who has agreed to suspend the business’s rental obligations while the restaurant is shut. There’s now pressure for this to become a nationwide standard so as to save even more jobs and livelihoods. A campaign for a National Time Out is asking that hospitality business rents to be paused until January 2021, when rental payments would begin again as normal.
In the meantime, Elgee, like many other restaurant owners, is working out how Myra’s Kaiseki can function in this new era of social distancing. “We sat quietly for a month and thought about it, looking at how we could adapt and create new revenue streams.”
The restaurant has just started offering takeaways and a home delivery service, it’s doing a weekly grocery run for its older isolating customers, and is delivering free meals once a week to NHS staff at Dorset county hospital. Elgee and his wife are working towards, potentially, a July reopening, albeit only operating at 40% capacity, and are now looking into serving Japanese street food from their outdoor terrace.
Elgee recognises the dilemmas and logistical issues facing the business: “We will have to discuss how we reopen with a limited number of seats, the economics are going to be difficult.”
There’s no quick fix for the restaurant industry, and it faces many challenges in the post-Covid world. But, with the right support, it is hoped that restaurants at the heart of their communities will survive. And Elgee remains optimistic about the prospect: “We were very much encouraged that this is something that is going to recover and we won’t be left out in the cold.”
Use the business support finder here to check whether your business is eligible for financial support.
The government furlough scheme: key facts
The UK government announced the employee scheme in March and has recently extended it until the end of October.
7.5 million workers and 1m businesses have been protected by the scheme across the UK.
Already the UK government has received claims for more than £10bn.
Workers across the UK now have the peace of mind that they can receive 80% of wages – up to £2,500 – until the end of October.
This is part of the multi-billion pound package of support and loans that the UK government is making available to workers and businesses all across the UK.
This advertiser content was paid for by the UK government. All in, all together is a government-backed initiative tasked with informing the UK about the Covid-19 pandemic.
