£6,000 is ‘paltry and pathetic’
Birmingham hospitality bosses demand more action to save sector
Even small venues need a minimum of £10,000 a month to keep ticking over Mike Olley, Westside BID
ACITY nightlife boss has condemned the Chancellor’s Christmas Covid rescue package as “paltry and pathetic”.
Mike Olley, general manager of Westside Business District, said Mr Sunak’s one-off payments to help the crumbling night-time sector was not enough to support small businesses – never mind massive Broad Street venues such as Rosie’s and Pryzm.
Rishi Sunak this week announced a £1bn Covid bailout package with one-off £6,000 grants for hospitality firms.
Mr Sunak said he was “confident” the extra support would help “hundreds of thousands” of businesses and millions of employees.
The news came after hospitality firms across Birmingham reported their lowest ever takings over what is usually a busy last weekend before Christmas.
Mr Olley told the Post said: “Our Christmas has been wrecked as a result of lockdown by stealth.
“The new bailout is pathetic, when you consider our overheads in what is more or less lockdown conditions.
“It sounds a lot but works out to be a very paltry sum of money for the number of venues that are dying. I was gobsmacked at the Chancellor boasting he had found this £1bn pot of cash for hospitality and how it is going to help so many businesses, when in reality it barely covers a couple of weeks rent.
“Even small venues need a minimum of £10,000 a month to keep ticking over, never mind places like Rosie’s and Pryzm.”
Mr Olley was speaking following a disastrous weekend of trading for Broad Street. The last Saturday before Christmas on Birmingham’s party strip is usually hugely lucrative for the area’s clubs, bars and restaurants.
However, Mr Olley compared the near-deserted street to the Mary Celeste.
All Broad Street venues reported they were 50 per cent down on customers – while being overstaffed and overstocked with fridges full of alcohol and food – ordered at the start of the party season.
Michelin-starred chef Aktar Islam who owns city centre restaurants
Opheem and Pulperia said: “Support, however little, is always welcome. But unless you’re a small operator like a sandwich shop for example, £6,000 is not going to cover costs.
“The rent for a year on a restaurant can be £150,000 so that would cover two weeks’ rent.
“My property costs on Pulperia are a quarter of a million pounds, to put things in perspective.”
Sam Boulton of the Pineapple Club, in the Great Western Arcade, said: “It’s all very late in the day – all down to media pressure. This is a small token to take the pressure off the goverment – after their cheese and wine parties over lockdown.
“We lost thousands on one Saturday. We usually make £10,000
“£6,000 will help us now, but it won’t see us through January. Will I be able to pay wages at the end of January? Rishi Sunak needs to be rolling out support for January and February.
“My worries are for the new year. This is quick fix band-aid. It cannot make up for the lack of consumer confidence. That will last a lot longer than Christmas.”
Mr Boulton has now made the decision to close until the December 27.
He said: “I don’t want to risk my staff ’s Christmas. I can’t let them work and then for them to catch Covid and not see friends and family.”
The boss of Birmingham’s leading real ale pub claimed he lost £15,000 in takings last week following Prof Chris Whitty’s comments about the rise of the Omicron variant.
Nige Barker, landlord of The Wellington, in Bennetts Hill, said: “We had our 17th birthday on Friday night and, like every year, once again we will be open on Christmas Day – from noon until 4pm.
“But Prof Whitty’s comments have cost me 15 grand at the Welly because trade was well down last week when normally we would be well up.
“It would be better if the Government closed us down and paid us compensation rather than decimate trade but we’re carrying on as best we can. We can’t get lost sales back, we can’t get compensation and we can’t get furlough.”
Michelin-rated restaurant owner
Alex Claridge urged ministers to “cut the bulls**t” and give businesses a road map of possible options now, before firms “fall off a cliff”.
Mr Claridge, who runs The Wilderness restaurant, said he made a decision in September not to take “big party” bookings at Christmas “because we felt it was risky”.
“That was the right decision, because we have not seen the wholesale collapse of bookings.
For me, the tragedy is the symmetry with what happened in March 2020.
“Yet again, at best it is naivety from the Treasury and the Government – it’s pretty limp and insipid.
“The advice seems to be have parties and don’t go to them.”
Mr Claridge said the pandemic had changed customer behaviour, with his restaurant going from the “dream” scenario of having 75% of bookings at least three months in advance, to now being 10 days in advance.
“I understand the Government wants to choose its words carefully – to avoid the word ‘must’ – but the horse has bolted.
“Everyone has an absolutely atrocious balance sheet, everyone is paying off Covid debts. Yes, we’ve had a good year. But set that against the context; it is going to take me two to three years to pay off the debt from Covid.”
He said much of the hospitality sector relied on the Christmas period to sustain businesses through the January to March period, but there was now real “jeopardy” for many.
Mr Claridge called for the Government to discuss its contingency planning with the industry quickly, as many restaurants break up on December 23 or Christmas Eve.
He said: “What needs to be discussed, even if they’re not terribly willing to do it, is a road map for business.
“Let’s cut the bulls**t. Because if you wait for businesses to be on the precipice, that’s not a good time to have that sort of discussions, because they’ll be about to fall off a cliff.
“If there is significant interruption, then I think it should be fair to assume that furlough should be reintroduced, and if there’s financial hardship, then will grants be on the table?
“If not, then we want a VAT freeze at 12.5% or we want it back down to 5%.”
> Left: Alex Claridge