One of the sectors that has been hit the hardest by COVID-19 is the restaurant business, as people have become too afraid to dine out for they may contract the virus. With this in mind, I decided to contact a local restaurant owner, Vinod Trivedi of Sai Restaurant (Wimbledon) and interview him on his views on the issue and how it is being handled.

 

Q. Can you please tell me a bit about your business and how long you’ve been running it?

A. I run an Indian restaurant, where we provide food on-site, delivery services and take out. I have been running this restaurant for the last 15 years.

 

Q. How have lockdown restrictions in the UK affected your business?

A. Initially when they locked down the country we had to shut down the restaurant, and we only did takeaway, which caused the revenue to drop down by 70-80 percent. There were also limitations made to staff working hours and it was quite difficult to pay rent and the bills.

 

Q. What have you done to overcome these issues?

A. We were still doing takeaway and we had to promote that on our website as well as other information about how we were handling the lockdown. We distributed pamphlets and used Instagram and Facebook to advertise that we were still doing takeaway.

 

Q. What actions of the Government do you think have worked well?

A. The only good thing that has been done was funding for the bills.

 

Q. What changes would you propose for the Government to be more helpful?

A. The Government could’ve done much more with continuous support to the restaurant after the lockdown.  The hand-sanitising and social distancing could have been enforced more and the Government could have had more positive publicity on the media.

 

Q. How have your employees reacted to the situation?

A. A few of my employees had refused to work because they had to take public transport so I had to work on my own. They were scared of the negative publicity from the Government and didn’t want to take public transport so some of them lost jobs.

 

Q. What are some ways of enjoying restaurant food if you are unable to go inside the restaurant?

A. You can have a takeaway and you can order the food which is all you can do at the moment, unfortunately.