Restaurants struggling during COVID-19

The owner of a local restaurant says COVID-19 rules have cost  his business money and loss of staff.

Greg Annesley of The Boathouse Seafood Restaurant spoke at the virtual meeting of Belleville’s Economic and Destination Development committee on Wednesday.

He outlined for the committee the challenges meeting the health and safety rules to protect the customers during the pandemic.

“Going back to March 17 at 10:30 in the morning when I’m watching TV news that restaurants were being closed down, it was pretty terrifying. Fortunately we were able to make some changes and open up the outdoor dining. Open up first off with takeout, which was helpful for a casual dining restaurant. From casual dining to takeout was a huge challenge. In my particular case fish and chips. Fish and chips will travel fairly well like pizza on delivery, but steak and lobster doesn’t travel so well. So there were a lot of challenges to trying to learn how to navigate that whole side of the business.”

Annesley said he often had difficulty getting the information.

He said the federal government funding assistance to workers, the CERB, caused some of them to stay home because it was more money, but that got better.

Annesley pointed out, “A lot of people are still frightened to come to restaurants despite safety protocols such as masks and distancing of tables.”

He noted a million tourists had visited Hastings and Prince Edward counties over the summer and not a single case of COVID-19 was found in any restaurant.

The restaurant owner pointed out, “Just the added protocols, which I understand is absolutely needed and we need to do these but there’s a cost involved for that, whether it’s the purchasing of PPE or sanitizers or extra cleaners, it’s extra labour. A server would normally, might take four or five table sections in a restaurant, now they’re taking three table sections in the restaurant because there’s so much more added work for that person to ensure that things are cleaned up and sanitized and are safe for all the guests.”

“We’ve added plexiglass barriers to separate other seating. We are using a newspaper style printed menu that’s designed to be disposable. There’s a big cost in that. So yeah, we probably spent, in our restaurant, we spent thousands. We spent probably $20,000 including building an additional patio out in front of the restaurant, in the parking area.”

Answering a question from the committee about costs, Annesley noted, “When I talk about margins, the average restaurant makes 5% profit. A $20,000 investment needs $400,000 in sales to just pay for that investment. So that’s a lot of money. That’s a lot of sales.”