POPULAR café and restaurant in Berea will be closing their doors due to the strain of load-shedding on the business.
The Market Café and Restaurant, located on Gladys Mazibuko Road, will be closing this May. The restaurant released a statement on its Facebook Page yesterday, announcing the closure, stating: “Load-shedding is one of the difficulties we cannot escape.”
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Avril Bedderson, the owner of The Market since 2019, said load-shedding has taken a major toll on the business, “We host weddings and functions and have rented generators to combat load-shedding, but even if we had to purchase a generator and bring it in, we are losing customers because people don’t want to sit in a restaurant when they have much bigger concerns caused by load-shedding. People don’t want to drive home in darkness, and they cannot enjoy going out like they used to.”
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Bedderson says that getting an uninterrupted power supply from a generator would be ideal, but it comes at a cost, “We don’t have the space to accommodate a generator, and then there is the cost. All-round we are losing money because of load-shedding.”
The business owner says that there has been an outpour of support from Durban residents, and to celebrate the good times that they have had at The Market, the café and restaurant will be hosting a last hooray on Friday, May 19 and Saturday, May 20, with their last day of trade being on Sunday, May 21. “Details about the farewell will be released soon,” said Bedderson.On Monday, Eskom resumed stage 6 load-shedding.
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