Af­ter three months of stag­na­tion, the restau­rant in­dus­try was giv­en a restart on Mon­day.

Al­though long await­ed, the re­sump­tion of ser­vice was far from smooth as many op­er­a­tors, if they man­aged to re­turn to op­er­a­tion at all.
Fast-food chain Wendy’s de­spite its promis­es on so­cial me­dia to see their pa­trons on Ju­ly 19, would in­stead have to place an­oth­er post stat­ing that it would be un­able to re­open on Mon­day as it had not re­ceive the re­quired ship­ments on time.

Wendy’s said, “Our ship­ment of raw ma­te­ri­als has been de­layed and that is crit­i­cal to us serv­ing you the en­tire menu  with our qual­i­ty in­gre­di­ents.”

Ken­tucky Fried Chick­en, opened their 60th restau­rant, one day af­ter their Char­lotte and Duke Street restau­rant was razed by fire, but they too opened with lim­it­ed menu op­tions and in­creased prices which raised the eye­brows of a few.

Re-open­ing day al­so meant clos­ing down day for one pop­u­lar restau­rant as the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic claimed an­oth­er vic­tim in Hak­ka Restau­rant & Bar in Wood­brook.

Like Chaud, which closed a cou­ple weeks pri­or, Hak­ka had been a game chang­er when it emerged on Tay­lor Street 11 years ago, in­tro­duc­ing In­di­an-style Hak­ka Chi­nese cui­sine to the coun­try.

Yet al­so like Chaud the brand has opt­ed to fo­cus on its satel­lite grab and go spin off  Hak­ka Ex­press as op­posed to the tra­di­tion­al din­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, at least un­til the pan­dem­ic sub­sides.

In a so­cial me­dia post the restau­rant said, “For those who en­joyed win­ing and din­ing in the am­bi­ence of our fab­u­lous Hak­ka Restau­rant, you won’t be dis­ap­point­ed for we have al­so em­barked on a new ven­ture that would pro­vide just that. In the up­com­ing months, we will open new doors to a mod­ern restau­rant con­cept, which will be con­ve­nient­ly lo­cat­ed at Brent­wood Mall in Ch­agua­nas. This amaz­ing in­door and out­door din­ing ex­pe­ri­ence will, of course, be made avail­able when COVID re­stric­tions have been lift­ed.”

While re­stric­tions have meant most restau­rants that de­pend on fine din­ing re­main dead in the wa­ter, the ex­pect­ed surge in sales up­on of the re­turn of curb­side and de­liv­ery ser­vice, just didn’t hap­pen when food out­lets re­sumed ser­vice.

Chef Brigette Joseph, restau­rant con­sul­tant and food safe­ty au­di­tor, is hope­ful that the lack of sales is re­lat­ed to the tim­ing of the re­open­ing.

“The re-open­ing has been slow on the up­take so far, as in I guess be­cause re-open­ing the mid­dle of the month, peo­ple just don’t have that dis­pos­able in­come as yet to par­take… that or… which I hope is the rea­son, that they are be­ing cau­tious with re­gards to the gath­er­ing and the crowd­ing at food places. So they haven’t come out in full force as yet, but it’s been okay so far,” said Joseph on Tues­day, the sec­ond day of the re­open­ing.

She said many with­in the in­dus­try were re­lieved but re­open­ing brought about ma­jor chal­lenges and ex­pens­es.

“Every­body is re­lieved but al­so ob­vi­ous­ly ex­haust­ed be­cause re­open­ing af­ter a three-month clo­sure is very tough… be­cause you have to re­stock the en­tire restau­rant which is very ex­pen­sive in ad­di­tion to the cost you would have from be­ing closed for so long. You have the cost of pur­chas­ing every sin­gle thing from scratch again. So it’s like open­ing a brand new restau­rant again,” she said

For man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Domi­no’s T&T, Daniel Fakoory it rep­re­sents an omi­nous sign of the true state of the coun­try’s econ­o­my com­ing out of the most re­cent lock­down of the wider busi­ness sec­tor.

“It’s not as busy as we an­tic­i­pat­ed it would be. It’s an in­di­ca­tion that the eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty of the coun­try has tak­en a tremen­dous hit not on­ly from COVID but every sec­tor of the econ­o­my be­ing af­fect­ed. So the fact is we did not re­open with a bang as ex­pect­ed. All of the food out­lets that re­opened yes­ter­day were ex­pect­ing it to be a lit­tle bit busier than it was, so that is the ini­tial feed­back is that it has not been as busy as we ex­pect­ed it to be. Which as I said that the econ­o­my of the coun­try is se­vere­ly suf­fer­ing,” he said.

The piz­za fran­chise would know more than most when curb­side and de­liv­ery sales are down as un­like many oth­er restau­rants, that’s how they main­ly do busi­ness.

The two brands un­der the um­brel­la of Quick Ser­vice Hold­ings, Pi­ta Pit and Domi­nos are not heav­i­ly re­liant on dine in cus­tomers as many oth­er across the coun­try. So much so he de­scribes them as  “Per­fect­ly de­signed for the covid en­vi­ron­ment and the new nor­mal we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing.”

“We are pri­mar­i­ly a de­liv­ery com­pa­ny as, you know, yes, de­liv­ery piz­za ex­pert and we are high­ly dig­i­tal so dig­i­tal and de­liv­ery that’s our core com­pe­ten­cy. So we’re per­fect­ly suit­ed for the en­vi­ron­ment go­ing for­ward. So we’re pret­ty healthy in that re­gard. We do not re­ly much on dine in cus­tomers, it ac­count­ed for about 5 per cent of our sales. So, do­ing with­out it is not too much of an is­sue for both our brands Domi­no’s and Pi­ta Pit. Pi­ta Pit is a fast ca­su­al grab-and-go. Not much dine and re­quired,” he said.

Un­like many oth­er es­tab­lished brands in the in­dus­try, Domi­no’s did not have to scram­ble to or­gan­ise an on­line plat­form for de­liv­ery and curb­side ser­vices. They have had the ser­vice in place since 2018 and with that ad­van­tage has ac­tu­al­ly seen a in­crease in sales when the ini­tial de­liv­ery and curb­side on­ly or­der was en­forced last year.

He be­lieves the pan­dem­ic has on­ly shown the wider in­dus­try what Domi­no’s had recog­nised ear­li­er con­cern­ing con­sumer trends.
“We saw the trend com­ing in the last cou­ple of years to­wards on­line or­der­ing, more de­liv­ery op­tions with third par­ty ag­gre­ga­tors. We saw it hap­pen­ing, it just brought the fu­ture five years ahead, Much quick­er than we an­tic­i­pat­ed,” he said, not­ing that be­ing one of the ear­ly adapters even cre­at­ed more sales for them dur­ing the pan­dem­ic when restau­rants were asked to op­er­ate with­in pre­scribed lim­its.

“Be­ing first to mar­ket, we were a year and half ahead of every­one else where on­line or­der­ing es­pe­cial­ly the ma­jor play­ers in the piz­za in­dus­try. We were a year and a half near­ly two years ahead be­cause we launched in Au­gust 2018,” said Fakoory. This al­lowed the fran­chise to fine tune their on­line ser­vices to make it one of the eas­i­est to use for cus­tomers.

Fakoory said that per­haps a clear­er idea could be seen next week, when much of the work­ing pop­u­la­tion would see their month end salaries ar­rive but he was grate­ful that they were giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to open now.

“Yeah, def­i­nite­ly. But the soon­er the bet­ter. To wait un­til pay­day wouldn’t have made much sense in any case, you know, on­ly more dam­age would have been done. So there was no per­fect time to shut down. There is no per­fect time to re­open. This is one of those things you had to do as soon as pos­si­ble,” said Fakoory.

The brand is al­so hope­ful that the fact they have not had to raise their prices would work in their favour.

How­ev­er, Fakoory not­ed that while their food sup­plies have not in­creased, their plans to ex­pand have been af­fect­ed by oth­er ex­pens­es.

“We have two new stores that we are open­ing and we have seen equip­ment prices sky­rock­et from 15 to 25 per cent in­creas­es in as lit­tle as cou­ple of weeks. So too with con­struc­tion and the con­struc­tion ma­te­r­i­al that go in­to mak­ing these stores. Prices have in­creased, scarci­ty of cer­tain prod­ucts have be­come an is­sue. So there are a lot of chal­lenges apart from the prices of food aris­ing out of this sit­u­a­tion,” he said.