Restaurant industry destroyed, 80% of workers unemployed

The lockdown has severely crippled the restaurant business and despite the reopening of the industry, the daily closures of restaurants have left approximately 80% of workers unemployed.

In his address to the nation on Wednesday, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the further reopening of industries during the level 3 lockdown, including restaurants for “sit-down” meals instead of the regulated delivery or collection.

But the industry is already destroyed, Restaurant Association of South Africa CEO Wendy Alberts said. She said she receives between 10 and 15 messages per day from restaurant owners who are shutting their business.

The country had about 23,000 restaurant which employed at least 800,000 people.

“We are running a list now and so far it is about 700 closures. We are currently siting in a situation where we have 80% of our staff unemployed.”

She said it was too late for a recovery plan as people are unemployed due to businesses being closed.

“It’s very sad times for us. It was on 24 May that the president was very sincere and said he hears the situation with restaurants and understands its critical. We’re a month later into it. And if there is anybody who is a business owner, you can understand that a business can hardly survive a bad week, never mind a bad month. And we are now going onto a bad season. Restaurants have really been decimated,” she said.

Cinemas and theatres, licenced accommodation and hair salons and beauty services were also reopened. Ramaphosa emphasised that the agreed stringent safety requirements would need to be put in place before a business can re-open.

Details of the measures and regulations as well as the date from which these activities will be permitted will be announced in due course, Ramaphosa said.

But should government reinstate the former regulation of serving only 50 customers at a time, restaurants would not survive, said Alberts.

“That will be the curtain closure for the industry. All the proposals of protocol and measurements put in place to indicate that we can safely open would have been wasted, and all the financial models and the decimation we have indicated to them would have been completely lost in translation.”

rorisangk@citizen.co.za

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