Plans put on hold
ARABIAN Coffee Break and Car Wash was undergoing renovations to extend and create more space for its customers however this has been put on hold as the second wave of COVID-19 brought its own challenges.
According to the co-owner Abdul Shiraz, the business was generating revenue during the pandemic through the sale of their cakes and sandwiches.
“Right now we are rolling out the business with the orders we get for our cakes, because every day someone is celebrating their birthday, anniversary etc.
“Plus our coffees and sandwiches are often popular with the workers in the banks and we also have weekly promotions as well.”
He said they generated a lot of interest with their weekly promotions, where they had special deals on meal packages.
Mr Shiraz and his wife started the business in November last year.
“Business had picked up last year and everything was all right until March,” he said.
“By then business started to drop because we could not have dine-ins.
“We were even about to expand our business, to allow for more seating areas and it was so busy that I was about to close the car wash so that we could have a sitting area outside as well.
“But now that there isn’t much business, we have put everything on hold.”
They were about to expand and build a new sitting area that would have been able to accommodate around 40 people.
Mr Shiraz also runs his tech company Infinite Technology Solutions which he started in 2016.
“Right now we are only doing takeaways, and it’s mostly sandwiches, burgers, coffees and cake.
“For our cakes we get orders daily.
“In our car wash we are only carrying out sanitising and normal washing.
“We also run an IT shop — I used to have a shop in Toorak which I had opened in 2016, at that time our shop was small and it was away from the business centre.”
He added they had an idea to come further into the city within the CBD area and had managed to get the space at Pratt St.
“When we got this space we noticed it was quite big so my wife and I thought why not expand our business to other areas apart from IT.”
He said his wife gave the idea of starting a coffee shop and a car wash.
At the moment the business employs five staff members on a full time basis.
Mr Shiraz said they had one staff in IT, two in the cakes department, one in the coffee shop and one in the car wash.
For the meantime they plan to retain their staff however they have reduced their hours because of the curfew.
“We don’t plan to terminate any of our staff members but we have shortened their hours from 8am to 3pm.”
The café also provides delivery services for their orders around the Suva area, up to 9 miles in Nakasi and to Lami.
Mr Shiraz said only those people who were employed were giving their orders and unfortunately this would not sustain them in the long run as they were finding it difficult to get some savings from their revenue.
“The main thing when running a business is you need to be able to save,” he said.
“In my IT business everything is closed, people want only IT support, some of our clients are operating but not a lot.”
His advice to businesses that were struggling was for them to take a look at their expenses as well as to make the most of their staff members.
Right now we are rolling out the business with the orders we get for our cakes, because every day someone is celebrating their birthday, anniversary etc – Abdul Shiraz