Restaurants offer 'eat early to help out' after 10pm curfew blow

Restaurants are to offer early bird menus and all-day dining in a bid to stay afloat as the 10pm curfew comes in. 

Struggling businesses, which have already had to adapt to new rules and reduce tables, accused the government of "punishing restaurants" as they warned that jobs will have to be cut.

Diners may be given incentives to eat at 5pm, with restaurateurs planning on giving a free welcome drink to those who plan on 'eating early to help out' and considering special discount menus.

Emma Underwood, the General Manager at Darby's in South London, said it is likely her team will face lower wages as a result of the new measures.

She told The Telegraph: "A 10pm closure has a very specific impact as it restricts our chances to have later sittings (from around 830 onwards) which is a huge loss. To counteract [that] we will implement earlier opening, at 5pm, but whether anyone will want to dine at that time will remain to be seen.

"We normally have to close at 11.30, so it’s a full 90 minutes of service lost. Normally service is six-and-a-half hours, so this amount of time is precious. It will hugely impact our business, less time to trade means less money coming in, and less hours for our team means lower wages for them."

James Robson, co-founder of London restaurant Fallow said they will be opening at 11am for the first time and are trying to "incentivise people to come out still."

He added: "Why are they punishing us? It makes no sense. Our key dining time is 8pm to 8.30. Who is going to book then if they know they’ll get kicked off at 10pm?  We will survive but there will be job cuts.

"Diners should book dinner a bit early to help out, we are ringing all our diners to ask if they want to come in earlier. It’s hard to fill the early sitting in the restaurant. We make money by turning tables, we’ve already reduced our tables, and we are being told in effect we can’t turn tables in an evening. Unless people shift their eating habits to coming out early at 5, we won’t turn the tables."

Michelin-starred restaurant Pied à Terre is starting all-day dining for the first time in its history.

Owner David Moore said he was considering giving free welcome drinks to people who book an early dinner table.

He added: "We will get those who have booked with us to come a bit earlier, hopefully we will be able to turn the tables by 8pm. We will be looking at a 35 per cent drop in business."

The restaurateur said he does not think the virus is likely to spread in well-ventilated restaurants with good spacing between tables, and said the 5 per cent of new infections Public Health England attributes to hospitality is most likely due to "misbehaving pubs".

He explained: "Maybe instead pubs who misbehave should be more heavily penalised than hitting us all with this. Why would fine dining cause it? We have temperature checks on everyone every day, spaced out tables, a fogging machine. I’ve not heard of anybody who has gone to restaurants be contacted by track and trace. I can guarantee the guy who is going out for five pints of lager will still go out for five pints of lager and catch covid. He will just do it earlier.”

Tom Fahey, co-General Manager of The Terrace at Yarmouth, on the Isle of Wight, said the new restrictions are going to be difficult for already exhausted restaurant staff.

He explained: "The real challenge is that lunch goes on as normal but to sustain the business we have to push our dinner service forward by an hour which has a massive knock on to the relative calm of 4.30-6 when staff have breaks and chill. This will barely happen now if we want to remain solvent. We are handling that by having a lunch shift and dinner shift which unfortunately reduces hours for many staff who need them."

Kate Nicholls, chief executive of industry group UKHospitality, joined criticism of the new restrictions.

She said: "It is hard to understand how these measures are the solution to fighting the disease when Government data shows that just 5 per cent of infections out of the home are related to hospitality.

"Where such restrictions have been put in place locally they have not cut infection rates, merely damaged business and cost jobs."