‘Last night we had six customers… It can’t go on like this’
FOR many restaurants and pubs across the country who have seen their trade decimated by the pandemic, the latest restrictions have proved a bridge too far.
The 8pm closing-time rule has left trade unviable for many in the hospitality sector, with some taking the difficult decision to keep their doors closed for the entire month of January.
Popular Malahide restaurants Sienna’s and The Greedy Goose are among those that will close from Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve respectively until current Covid restrictions are lifted, provisionally slated for January 30.
The owner of both restaurants, Mary Nagle, says the earlyclosing stipulation is
‘completely uneconomic’ for her businesses and has left her and her staff ‘deeply depressed’.
Ms Nagle told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘They say closing time is at 8pm, but the reality is that, because all the food is cooked to order, really the last people you can have in the door is at 6pm.
‘So really you’re talking about a much earlier evening, and people aren’t really interested in that. So we’ve had an extraordinary amount of cancellations – I’m in this business since 1995 and I’ve never seen anything like the scale of the cancellations.’
She estimates 90% of her bookings for December were cancelled. While some restaurants in Dublin city centre have spoken about the impossibility of cramming a night’s worth of service into a few hectic hours, Ms Nagle says ‘it’s the opposite’ in her case.
‘You have six people in a restaurant with a capacity of 60 or 70. People are not coming out. We would historically have a busy trade at Christmas.
We’re very well known in Malahide and people are very loyal and come every year. I think last night in The Greedy Goose we did around six people. One customer said, “We didn’t really fancy coming out but we just thought we’d give you the support”. If you have to pay three chefs, a kitchen porter and at least two members of staff, that’s six employees and all of them are on more than minimum wage, for six customers. It’s not sustainable.
‘By the time you pay your overheads; electricity, gas, the preparation of food that probably won’t get sold, and then nobody coming in. It’s completely uneconomic.’
Ms Nagle believes that, aside from the prospect of dining at 6pm being less attractive to customers, people are following Government advice to limit social contacts. She even had a tense exchange this week attempting to contact a no-show.
‘When we finally got them [on the phone], I suppose they were on the back foot and they were a bit snappy and said, “Are you not listening to the news? Sure [Chief Medical Officer] Tony Holohan said not to go out – of course we’re not going out”. So you have that as well.
Ms Nagle says she accepts the Government are ‘doing their best’, but that supports offered to the hospitality sector only just allow businesses to keep their heads above water. ‘Really it’s life support,’ she says.
‘We’re deeply depressed, to be honest. I don’t know if we’ll ever get out of it.’
Ms Nagle would have closed as soon as early-closing was announced, recognising that it would be ‘unviable’ to operate, but wanted to give staff – who will go back on the PUP for January – another week or two of work. ‘You have to keep fighting for the staff. They’ve been great and loyal and hanging on in there,’ she says.
The restaurateur adds that she will reopen early ‘if there’s good news’, but knows better than to hold her breath after a wretched two years for hospitality.
‘I do hope it will open [at the end of January] because last year we closed at 3pm on Christmas Eve and reopened at the beginning of August.’
‘We’re not coming. Dr Tony said not to go out’