Food for Thought It’s make- or- break for Scotland’s restaurants

Hospitality firms face struggle to survive over next few months, says

What a difference a day makes. On Monday you would have struggled to get a table at many restaurants on the last day of the Chancellor’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme. Just 24 hours later, the crowds had gone and the hospitality sector was again staring into the abyss.

Designed to give the public an incentive to have the confidence to eat out again, the initiative was more successful than anyone could have imagined. Offering halfprice meals up to a limit of £ 10 per person, between Monday and Wednesday during August, it was used more than 64 million times during the first three weeks of the month.

The challenge was always going to be, what happens next? Some have called for the scheme to be extended into the autumn but that only seems to delay the inevitable. The upmarket steak and seafood chain Hawksmoor addressed that in a message to customers this week. “A time is coming soon when restaurants have to stand on their own two feet – without government help and with the conviction that their normal prices are the right ones. For Hawksmoor we want that time to be now,” they said.

Eat Out to Help Out may have cost the UK government as much as £ 400 million, but the alternative is to see benefit claims rocket from hospitality workers made redundant. However, should a government be subsidising eating out in an age of obesity and when some sections of society are simply struggling to eat in? None of this is easy.

In the absence of further government support, some restaurants and bars have decided to extend the scheme in their own way. That may well result in them losing money in the short term, but if the alternative is empty tables and a business that then closes with staff being made redundant, picking up the tab seems a small price to pay.

On Wednesday I had lunch in one restaurant where a hefty subsidy was still in place, yet bookings were down 50 per cent on the previous week. Consumer confidence is still very shaky.

Glasgow restaurants reported sudden cancellations at the start of the week when the Scottish Government instructed people not to visit each other at home following a rise in coronavirus cases in the city. Although there was no hospitality lockdown, nervous customers simply voted with their feet.

Restaurants always thrive when the economy is booming. In contrast, we are facing the worst downturn since the Second World War with many people fearing for their jobs when the furlough system ends in October.

The next six months will be make or break for the hospitality sector. Research for the Edinburgh University Business School suggests a quarter could go bust, putting up to 58,000 people out of work.

The last month has shown us just how much we love to eat out. Half a century ago it was an occasional treat but now it is part of our regular routine. For the industry to survive as we know it, people need to go out and spend money – but that will only happen when we have mass testing and the virus is under control.

Until then every day in the restaurant trade is just about survival and doing whatever it takes to stay in business.