Two city restaurants set to close monday to thursday
TWO of Cardiff’s best-known restaurants have taken the decision to close from Monday to Thursday due to a lack of citycentre trade.
The owners of Bar 44 and Asador 44 said they were “gutted” to have to take the decision.
A statement said: “We have taken these steps to try to safeguard the future of the business. Please use us Friday to Sunday to help us get to the other side.”
Natalie Isaac, director at the 44 Group, said: “As an independent family-run business, we are absolutely devastated to have had to make the decision to close our city-centre venues on a Monday to Thursday with immediate effect.”
She said when they reopened the restaurants, in Westgate Street and Quay Street in the city centre, in August they were trading at around 50% of pre-Covid revenue but after the introduction of the local lockdown in Cardiff and the 10pm curfew that went down to 25%.
Natalie added: “This in no way covers our fixed costs or staffing costs. The introduction of these measures also meant that staff hours were drastically cut, leaving job security at the forefront of everyone’s mind in the hospitality and tourism sector.
“We had more staff than customers, a very similar situation to where we found ourselves in mid-March when the Wales v Scotland rugby international was cancelled with 24 hours’ notice.
“We cannot plan, we have to respond to these changes at very short notice and continue to troubleshoot and try to reinvent our offering in order to get through this pandemic.”
She also called for more clarity on what is happening in the future. “Our team are, as ever, amazing, but we all deserve more than this,” she said.
“Pre-Covid, we were a financially stable, profitable business and we feel that each day there are more questions than answers. We need some clarity about the future very quickly, as well as a financial support package from Welsh Government, or I am in no doubt that Wales will see a vast number of great hospitality businesses disappear in the next few months from high streets and city centres.”
The Spanish restaurant Curado, which is also in Westgate Street, has also taken the decision to only open from Tuesday to Sunday.
Owner Shumana Palit, who also owns Vermut next door, said: ”Curado has been closed on Monday nights ever since the first lockdown restrictions were lifted; what was previously one of our busiest evenings, often filled with industry folk who had worked all weekend coming in to let off some steam, quickly became the quietest night of the week.
“Our sister bar, Vermut, which is just next door, opened for the first time two weeks before lockdown came into effect.
“Business ever since we were allowed to reopen has been minimal thanks to the various restrictions in place and it is now only open on Friday and Saturday nights – and this is only possible because it is next door to Curado and we can spread staff accordingly, otherwise it would be closed all the time.
“We are dealing with so much uncertainty, which has been constant; staff have been brought off furlough in August, only to be told that new lockdown restrictions were coming into place and we now don’t have any work to give them as we’re so quiet.
“Some staff are down to one shift per week. We desperately need to see some light at the end of the tunnel.”
Meanwhile the Welsh Independent Restaurant Collective (WIRC), which represents more than 300 registered supporting cafes, pubs, and restaurants across Wales, has sent an urgent letter to Welsh Government ministers asking for clarity on proposals to impose a ‘circuit-breaker’ shutdown of hospitality.
The letter is co-signed by Brains Brewery and Castell Howell.
They said a circuit-breaker will have “very direct and profound impacts on thousands of Welsh businesses and jobs and as such urgent and immediate support is now essential to their survival”.
Alistair Darby, the chief executive of Brains Brewery, said: “We welcome the First Minister’s recent comments, and those of the health minister, which recognised that there is no significant evidence of transmission emanating from hospitality businesses. Yet a circuit-break shutdown of hospitality is now being considered.
“We have written to Welsh Government to raise our grave and urgent concerns that this will be the death knell for many in our sector if immediate support is not provided.”