SETTING THE TABLE
Sit-down restaurants all over the country are readying themselves for reopening. But quite what SA’S restaurant space will look like amid Covid-19 remains unclear
After eight years in the restaurant business it took James Diack four hours into lockdown to figure out who his real friends were. Known for his “from farm to fork” approach, the owner of Coobs, Il Contadino, La Stalla and Douglas & Hale says some suppliers melted away, while others got on board and supported his businesses.
It’s a favour he’s now looking to return, after President Cyril Ramaphosa announced last week that restaurants would be allowed to open for sit-down service under relaxed level 3 restrictions. As Diack gets his service fully up and running, he’s decided to stick with the suppliers that supported him. “Jordan [Wines], for instance, went out on a limb,” he says. “They sold cases of wine for R600 and of that donated R500 to Coobs staff.”
There’s much uncertainty that surrounds the reopening of SA’S restaurants — not least knowing when it’s likely to go ahead. At the time of going to print, the government had yet to set a date or gazette regulations for the sector. Noone knows how many places will have shut permanently due to the three-month lockdown, or whether enough patrons will be comfortable about going out to make the trade sustainable. Also uncertain is just how different the restaurant scene is going to be.
Before Joburgers can head back to Diack’s restaurants, he’s making substantial changes. On the business front, Coobs is relocating to the Douglas & Hale site in Parktown North. La Stalla will become a deli, selling organic produce and ethically sourced products from the Diack family farms and small local producers. And Douglas & Hale will hopefully fight to see another day — as a 75-seater restaurant rather than a 128-seater.
Then there are the more direct Covidinduced changes. A sanitation company will heat-clean glasses each morning; cutlery will be steam-cleaned and put in closed packets; and Diack is working on sourcing individually wrapped napkins.
To satisfy social distancing requirements, one in every three tables will be removed.
A less cluttered restaurant will allow people to feel safer, but it’s about striking a balance too. “People also don’t want to feel like they’re eating in an ICU,” says Diack.
It’s a sentiment echoed by Gary Kyriacou, co-owner of upmarket Joburg restaurants Marble and Saint. “People must understand that we will take all the safety and sanitising precautions,” he says. “But we can’t make it a hospital either. People must assess their own risk. If they have underlying conditions, if they’re a bit older, if they’re more susceptible, they should not go out.”
Like Diack, Kyriacou is losing seating space — both his restaurants will be down by about 30%, from 220 to 130 seats. Luckily both are large enough to accommodate social distancing requirements.
For already struggling operators, reduced seating will hike up the pressure. Sit-down restaurants traditionally operate with high costs, narrow margins and high debt levels. With social distancing regulations in place, they’ll be operating at less than 70% of sit-down capacity — making break-even sales unlikely, says the Restaurant Collective, an industry association that lobbied the government to open restaurants on level 3.
The lockdown restrictions have resulted in huge trading losses and a complete standstill in income for restaurants, placing most — if not all — sit-down restaurants in a precarious financial position, says Grace Harding, CEO of Ocean Basket and spokesperson of the 500-member collective.
Diack puts the cost of the lockdown to his restaurants at between R3.5m and R5m. And it’s not money that he believes can be clawed back. “As restaurants, we have to realise our limitations right now and what people can afford, and look at the past three months as the dark months. We’ve lost the money,” he says.
It has forced restaurateurs to rethink their offering to ensure their survival.
Vasco da Gama Taverna is something of an institution in Cape Town. What started out as a Portuguese tavern 48 years ago expanded into the family restaurant business eight years back. But it was never geared towards takeaways or deliveries.
Things changed with the lockdown. The Green Point-based outfit created an online menu and turned to deliveries and takeaways — and, says general manager Colin Judin, it’s now doing about 80% of its original menu for takeaway. As the liquor restrictions lifted, it also started selling bottles of alcohol to patrons at wholesale prices.
But the margins in deliveries and takeaways are generally a lot lower. According to Harding, delivery and takeaway, for most sitdown restaurants, accounts for only about 20% of total sales in regular times.
To break even, most restaurants must achieve sales well above what delivery and takeaways can generate.
For Diack, takeaways were a means of keeping his brand alive. “Takeaways gifted us no profit, but we haven’t incurred a loss from them,” he says. “[The service] kept me sane and moderately sober. It has allowed us … to figure out how we come back.”
Bigger brands have also had to grow their takeout business. Spur Corp’s brands — Spur, John Dory’s and Rocomamas — have increased their takeout sales. But the group’s turnover is nowhere near what it was before Covid-19.
It’s innovating in other areas, though. Its Hussar Grill, for example, is offering a limited menu of steak, meat cuts and other items that customers can prepare at home.
Pizza chain Col’cacchio is also supplementing its income, selling homemade products in the hope that patrons will use its restaurants “like a supermarket”, says MD Kinga Baranowska.
The Col’cacchio Pantry launched at Cape Town’s foreshore last week, ahead of a national rollout. It has started with pizza kits, pasta sauces and homemade dressings, and will also sell cheeses and sauces (the restaurant chain’s Barone sauce, for example), among other products.
Baranowska is thinking ahead to reopening: “We’re going to have fewer staff, who will social-distance, and not as many recipe variations as before.”
The turn to simplicity is a likely trend. US chef and restaurateur Tom Colicchio told The Atlantic magazine last month that social distancing in the kitchen (meaning fewer chefs) could make it difficult to produce complex dishes.
The restaurateurs the FM spoke to seemed to be leaning towards pared-down offerings. Diack will be reducing his wine offerings and Judin expects menus across the board to be simpler.
Tashas founder Natasha Sideris says her company is moving to “sophisticated simplicity”. It has refined its menu, its cake displays will be less elaborate and the group will be more generally mindful about how it operates.
She’s already reopened her restaurants in the Middle East, where, she says, people are happy to be back in restaurants. “They want to feel comfortable, and it is of critical importance that we, as a team, provide them with certainty that we are doing everything possible to be safe.”
Part of that may require a move outside. The Atlantic has reported how a cluster of Covid-19 cases from a restaurant in Guangzhou, southern China, was found to have spread not through human contact but from a Covid-19-positive patron who sat in the direct path of the restaurant’s airconditioner. The strong airflow pushed infected droplets to tables in line with the airconditioner.
Because of an apparent reduced likelihood of catching the virus outdoors, some cities in the US — including Berkeley and Cincinnati — plan to turn some streets into pedestrian zones to free up outdoor dining space for restaurants, allowing them to push up their seating capacity.
It’s an option that would seem suited to popular Joburg restaurant strips such as Fourth Avenue in Parkhurst, Seventh Street in Melville or Grant Avenue in Norwood. But the FM’S inquiries suggest no such plans have been put forward.
Other changes are perhaps easier. Colicchio suggested to The Atlantic that interactions between patrons and waiters may be reduced if diners order their meals online before they arrive at a restaurant, or on tablets at the table.
Sideris expects a move to single-use paper menus and “no-touch” digital menus. Billfolds will be done away with and condiments will be provided in single portions.
The restaurant industry is typically hygienic, and used to keeping spaces sanitised — a point raised by a number of the restaurateurs the FM canvassed. Even so, the Restaurant Collective is putting in place protocols and supportive training initiatives ahead of the reopening. Its 500 associate restaurants will all take staff and customers’ temperatures before they may enter the premises, and they’re putting social distancing and sanitising protocols in place.
Of course, some restaurants will find the requirements easier than others. Mcdonald’s SA CEO Greg Solomon says the fast-food chain is in a slightly different position as substantially more than half its business comes from drivethroughs, “which are probably the most contactless type of food delivery”.
He expects sit-down restaurants, when they reopen, to run at 30%-50% capacity, with Perspex barriers installed in some areas, and cutlery given to patrons in plastic sachets.
This is for those that survive the crunch. Sideris says: “We work in an industry where … cash flow is dependent on being open. Many restaurants have sadly already had to close.”
One that won’t be reopening soon is Ba-pita, the former Yeoville staple that was brought back to life in
Melville 18 months ago. “Until we can seat people without social distancing while they enjoy a drink or two, Bapita is simply not viable,” the restaurant said on Facebook. “To be absolutely clear, Covid-19 and all the destruction it has brought in its wake is the reason for our closure — nothing more, nothing less.”