Anticipation, concern among restaurant owners as they prepare to reopen on Monday

THERE was a mixture of anticipation and concern on Thursday among various restaurant and food establishment owners ahead of the upcoming planned reopening of their businesses.

At a news conference at the Diplomatic Centre, St Ann's on July 10, the Prime Minister announced the reopening of all restaurants, food establishments, itinerant and non-itinerant food services to provide drive-through, curbside and takeaway services from Monday.

Prestige Holdings CEO Simon Hardy said staff at its KFC, Subway, Starbucks, Pizza Hut and TGI Friday restaurants have been out at their respective establishments making the necessary preparations. He said those include ongoing cleaning, checking inventories, placing orders for stocks and testing all equipment to make sure they were functioning properly.

Hardy said that would continue up to Friday.

"We have a light weekend to give staff a chance to rest before the surge that we expect to get next week."

To avoid any instances of congregations outside of any of its restaurants, Hardy said, "We will be doing communication with our excited customers. We missed you too but we need to all adhere to the Government's (covid19) guidelines."

He said staff would ensure there were no unnecessary assemblies of people outside the restaurants.

"We are making some limited menu adjustments where we might have a restricted menu by certain branches." Hardy said the original menu would be re-established at those branches, after the initial expected rush of customers.

Royal Castle customer experience manager Natalie Gordon said Royal Castle had an ongoing maintenance programme of all its outlets while they were closed for the last two and half months. She said staff would ensure that all covid19 protocols are enforced on July 19. She did not expect there would be adjustments to the menu at Royal Castle's outlets.

"Most of the items are there ready to go. We'll have product ready."

To reduce the number of people coming to its outlets, Gordon said Royal Castle would encourage customers to use options such as deliveries to get their food. Gordon said Royal Castle is doing all its preparations this week and will give its staff a chance to rest on the weekend.

Expecting a rush

Trinidad Hotels, Restaurants & Tourism Association president Hassel Thom said, all of the association's members are at their establishments making preparations for Monday. His concern was "oversubscription on the first couple days."

While understanding that customers were eager to have their favourite meals from various restaurants from next week, Thom said, "That doesn't change the need to follow the protocols. Not everyone needs to get their favourite meal on day one."

He hoped that from Monday there would be a "responsible purchasing public to ensure that they follow the protocols."

Thom cautioned that if that did not happen, "We may go back to a place where we just came from."

He hoped that further relaxation of protocols could eventually see the return of in-house dining at restaurants.

"We are not going into this to operate for a month, we should be going into this, for this to operate for years."

Thom hinted full vaccination of employees may be necessary before in-housing dining could resume.

Passage to Asia owner Dipchan Persad said preparations have been ongoing at its restaurants in Port of Spain and Chaguanas. He said some stock such as vegetables and desserts which had expired, had to be disposed of. While all protocols will be in place at both Passage to Asia restaurants, Persad believed more customers would opt for fast food or street food.

Vaccination incentives beginning to be viewed with scepticism

Trotters Restaurant Group owner Peter George said all its outlets would be open on Monday with the exception of its San Fernando restaurant and Blue Star diner in Maraval. George said the situation would be assessed continuously to determine when it would be feasible to open those branches.

He described next week's reopening as "very small baby steps in the right direction."

While he was glad that fast food and other quick-service establishments would be open along with traditional restaurants, George said challenges remain for the latter.

"Curbside is no great shakes."

He said resources have to be provided to make deliveries to customers and allowances made for employees to leave work on time to get home before the start of the daily 9 pm to 5 am curfew.

Noting Trotters' efforts to encourage its employees to be vaccinated, George said,"A lot of people are beginning to interpret more incentivisation as coercion." He added, "Coercion is a slippery slope."

George said challenges experienced by some of Trotters' employees to access financial relief from the Government as "a macabre comedy show." While optimistic that the reopening of the food sector next week could lead to opening of other parts of the retail sector later, George said, "The understanding is we have to learn to live with this."

He said, "There is no such thing as post covid. This is not going to ups and vanish like a bird in the wind."