Customers are now welcome to sit in restaurants, of course not in excess of fifty percent of the seating capacity. They can sit in the restaurant till 9 o’clock which may be ideal for some and not so for others. This raises an interesting question for restaurateurs. Should they hire more staff in anticipation of an increase in demand or should they continue with the present number of staff. The problem is that due to the possibility of a third wave coming in, the chances of another lockdown seems possible if past experiences are anything
to go by.
Rony Martins of Mum’s Kitchen said they preferred to stay lean and not take any more staff. He said “One has to only look at what happens when the lockdown is lifted in other parts of the country like Delhi, Manali to name just two, and the people go berserk. People do not wear masks, it gets crazy and increases the chance of the number of cases increasing. That could then lead to another round of lockdowns. So we shall wait and see.”
Pranav Dhuri of Tato’s Fine Dining said they intended to make do with existing staff. He said “There is still a great deal of uncertainty in the business and we feel we can make do with existing staff. The amount of business that is being conducted can easily be handled by them. If we take on new staff then the stress of vaccinations will be present, then overcrowding. So for now we will not recruit”.
Lawrence, a staff member of Peep Kitchen said a decision had been made by the management to call the staff who were employed at the restaurant and so approximately 15 members would be arriving in a couple of days from Orissa. They were, he said, preparing to handle the business that would come once the situation improved.
The fear of the future is still strong amongst the restaurateurs. Suraj Khare of the ironically named Lock Down Food station said they intended to work with what they had because they had no idea how the situation would turn out in the future. He said it still looked very difficult and it did not make any sense to invest and hire more staff.
Perhaps the effect of the lockdown is best exhibited by the personnel who responded at Black Vanilla Gourmet. Suraj said “We will not be recruiting. We have seven staff in this one outlet. We had four restaurants before the lockdown and that has now been reduced to just one. We are now overstaffed”.
It is quite obvious that while restaurateurs seem happy with the introduction of longer hours, the nature of the virus, the manner in which it expands so dramatically helped no doubt by the unthinking behaviour of some members of the general public makes it still very difficult to place a firm bet on the future.
One can only hope everyone does their bit to ensure the third wave does not hit Goa like the second wave did cause no one is the winner.
