READY FOR RELAUNCH BUT KOI ON CLOSURES

BROADBEACH’S hospitality king is reopening his bar-restaurant empire from today, saying it will be “trial and error” with the border still closed and tight patron limits.

Pat Gennari starts his relaunch with popular bar and eatery The Loose Moose from 5pm today before unveiling his newly revamped Surf Parade favourite Koi tomorrow.

He will open Roosevelt Lounge bar with food servings via Loose Moose from tonight. Marina Mirage restaurant Glass opens next Wednesday.

It will enable him to bring back to work 50 of his staff who’ve been surviving on $1500-a-fortnight JobKeeper payments. Prior to the crippling hospitality restrictions aimed at halting coronavirus, he had a crew of 200.

Mr Gennari, who had shelled out $1.3 million in his latest refurbishment of

Koi, said he was “excited to start opening” and show off the new “bigger” Koi: “But I’m not excited about the border being shut.

“A lot of our customers are tourists too. We get a lot of people coming from NZ, Melbourne, Sydney.

“So I hope the Premier opens the border for the school holidays. It will make a real difference for us. We have big restaurants and they cost a lot to run. We need a lot of customers to pay those bills and staff.”

But Mr Gennari said the reopening would be “trial and error” and he hoped cooped up locals bored at home were “dying to come out”: “We just have to check the market at the moment. Hopefully we get people from Brisbane.

“Hopefully Anna opens the border so we can start up again. She’s gone too far and she needs to stop.

“Sure, keep borders shut internationally for the time being but let’s open it up here and start living again.”