Restaurants reopen with mixed success

Smaller restaurants are already seeing a return of customers since they have reopened for dining in, following the Prime Minister’s announcement on Saturday. However, larger restaurants have not yet seen a resurgence of customers.

Proprietor Pervez McDoom of Curry Khazana in the Valpark food court said he reopened for dining in on Tuesday, and since then has seen a return of almost 75 per cent of the customers he had pre-covid19.

“Part of the reason for that I think is that during the covid19 period we decided to improve our quality even more so that whatever few customers are coming in would come back, and that’s what’s happened so far. It’s really tough out there, a lot of restaurants have closed down here and all over the place, so we decided to work extra hard to make sure the customer experience is perfect and we’ve met with great success.”

He said the customers were a mix of working people, tenants of the mall and residents of the area.

A supervisor at the Irie Bites restaurant on Ariapita Avenue said people are coming in to dine for lunch, although the numbers were not up to their pre-covid19 levels.

Restauranteur Peter George said all the restaurants in the Trent Restaurant Group, including Trotters, Buzo Osteria Italiana, Amara, Blue Star Diners, and Tommy’s, would reopen for dining on Wednesday. He said this included the San Fernando branch of Trotters, which closed at the end of October.

“The restaurant was closed temporarily because takeaway only was not feasible, so now it will be reopened. The two restaurants that were opened on Monday and Tuesday, business was sluggish and worse than last week. We have to wait for people to get into the proper frame of mind, and it might also be because it’s Divali week, so we will wait on the weekend and see.

"Right now our staff is happy to be back out to work earning and functional.

"Two days is too soon to tell what will happen, in the next two weeks we’ll have a better idea of how things have turned out.”