‘Businesses are facing having to make some very brutal decisions in the coming days’
Dan Warder runs Top Joe’s Pizzeria in Tenby & Narberth. Here he writes about the difficult decisions restaurateurs are having to make as the furlough scheme starts to change with no certainty about the future for businesses like his in Wales...
THE last few months have been some of the most stressful and worrying in memory for many of us who own and run our own food businesses.
Our pizzeria and restaurants in Tenby and Narberth have been closed since mid March, with staff furloughed and no idea currently when we will be able to re-open.
We’ve been operating since 2012 and employ 10 full-time staff members with up to 30 people working for us full or part time over the busy summer months. All our full-time staff are currently on furlough.
Small businesses have worked incredibly hard to create an exciting, vibrant and unique experience both for tourists and local people alike over the last decade.
Some of us may never be able to open our doors again.
The financial effect of Covid-19 has left us in a difficult position, facing having to make some very brutal decisions in the coming days.
Whilst we welcome it, the furlough scheme will not on its own be enough for us to sustain jobs and effectively keep our businesses mothballed.
We still have rent or mortgages to pay, utility companies and suppliers.
Like most businesses, our insurers have rejected our claims.
Of course the coronavirus pandemic has affected everyone in many complex ways and we have all been happy to comply Welsh Government advice to stay at home and protect public health. As we think about what the future may hold, our primary concern is still for the health and safety of our staff and customers.
We now stand on a precipice. The furlough scheme is essentially designed around the timeline for easing the lockdown in England.
This will work against us in Wales. We are already finding the financial burden hard to bear.
With the tapering of the scheme from August 1 and no idea currently when we might be able to trade again, in reality this means we are having to make decisions on redundancies and potential closures right now.
This will have a direct and dramatic impact not just for us, but also for our suppliers and producers nationwide. In Pembrokeshire, we are hugely reliant on the seasonal summer trade, which carries us through the rest of the year; this has already been lost.
Whilst our concern is obviously for our own staff and their jobs, we have also been speaking to many other businesses like ours which are independently owned and run across Wales.
We are different from the big chains in how we operate, in what our values are, in our community focus and most importantly the impact we make in our local areas.
We worry that in the future our high streets may be full of chains, with the small independent businesses having failed to survive the crisis.
Of course the ability to start trading in itself will not be enough to maintain our businesses.
We anticipate a significant fall in turnover, low customer confidence and restrictions on numbers of people (understandable of course). But we are a creative bunch.
Most people running businesses like ours are not motivated by making a fortune, but we love the things we do.
We have ideas about how we could trade in a safe and sensible way to ensure social distancing is maintained. We can control bookings, where people sit, how they pay.
However, to do this we need the sector to be supported to innovate, whether that’s investing in technology to allow advance and remote payments, implementing new advance booking systems, or exploration of different local delivery options (to avoid the international delivery firms who charge us ridiculous commission).
We can innovate to ensure that independent small businesses survive and we don’t end up with a homogenous high street experience.
To do so we want to work with government as they plan to ease the lockdown. We need our customers to keep the faith, encouraging and supporting through during these dark days.