Western Daily Press (Saturday)
West ready to dine come rain or shine as our pubs and restaurants reopen
Though we all welcome the latest easing of lockdown and look forward to meeting our friends for a meal or a pint from Monday, it’s not as straight forward for our business owners, as Hannah Finch, Hannah Baker and William Telford report
THE return of al-fresco dining and a pint in a beer garden marks the end of a very long winter for the UK’s cafes, restaurants and pubs.
Many have been getting creative with their outdoor spaces, simplifying menus and shifting opening times to make the most of the warmer times of day.
But it has not been an easy decision for business owners who have had to weigh up whether they will be able to make any money on the fewer customers they will be able to serve.
Robin Hutson, founder of the PIG Hotel group, will be opening the hotel’s outside eating areas alongside its self-catered accommodation but cannot yet welcome guests to stay in the hotels themselves.
“I’ve quit moaning now,” he said after earlier publicly questioning the sense in keeping hotels closed until May 17 at the earliest.
“However, I can’t quite get the rationale of keeping hotels closed when I think there’s more chance of catching it in an education setting or on public transport. I do think we have been unjustly targeted.
“But it is what it is and hopefully, with the vaccine rollout, we have a different set of circumstances now.”
He said that opening up an entire hotel and grounds to welcome guests for outside dining is no easy task.
“There are so many different aspects to it, we have to be careful about our customer experience and bringing all the staff back to work again who will have to find their feet again. Inevitably they will be rusty but this is a good way of easing people back in before the hotels open fully in May,” he added.
regulars in the summer due to its large outdoor seating area and serving up pizzas from its very own outdoor oven.
It will be encouraging guests to use the Track and Trace programme, one-way systems when indoors and ordering via table service.
Ring Of Bells Inn, North Bovey, Devon
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The country pub has a sheltered beer garden in a stunning tucked away village on Dartmoor.
Landlord Richard Edlmann has restored the 13th-century thatched inn after a devastating fire in 2016. Since then, it has built a reputation as one of Devon’s foremost foodie destinations and has a good local trade alongside the busy tourist season with visitors to Dartmoor.
Richard said: “The lockdown hasn’t been as hard as the aftermath of the fire because we’ve not had to put the building back together again but it certainly has been interesting.”
He said that he has kept a core staff on furlough and the outside service from Monday is the first tentative step to re-opening. The Inn also has five rooms which cannot be occupied until May 17. “We have to put the financials aside at this point and think about the longer term. We are using this as the first stage of reopening and getting the business up and running again.
“On the whole, I do think that opening up as the weather gets warmer is the right thing to do, considering that we saw transmission rates go down last summer but the last thing we want is another lockdown. At the same time, there is pent-up demand because people are desperate to get out, we are social creatures and we need that human contact. For us, the main reason for opening is to get our confidence back and for our customers to get their confidence back. There is still a degree of nervousness, I think.”
He said that initiatives like last year’s Eat Out to Help Out Scheme had been successful with fewer customers tending to spend more at each sitting.
And he said that the Government’s furlough, business rate and VAT relief had been helpful. But many businesses were now facing repayments in an uncertain trading environment.