No Valentine celebrations for Melbourne restaurants in latest lockdown
Owners of restaurants and hospitality venues around Melbourne are in shock at the latest snap lockdown that was announced just before two of the most lucrative industry days of the year: Valentine’s Day and Lunar New Year.
Ashleigh Dyer, owner of Hemingway’s Wine Room – a French-influenced Brasserie in East Melbourne – has lost more than $20,000 due to this latest forced closure.
“I cried a little bit when the lockdown was announced,” she said.
“I was pretty devastated. We’ve constantly been in this state of mild fear the entire year of, ‘Something else is going to crop up’. It’s been pretty exhausting.”
This weekend Hemingway’s was booked out and it was set to be Dyer’s busiest weekend since opening 10 months ago.
Hemingway’s has only been open for 10 weeks in all that time.
Dyer told The Age, “As a small business owner I think the timing is horrific,” but, “I think we need to nip [COVID-19] in the bud and get the cases under control.
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t choose its dates very well, when it wants to flare up.”
In South Yarra, owner of restaurant Caffe E Cucina, Arthur Georgiou, lost bookings for 620 people.
Georgiou said that his income for Saturday alone was down 95 per cent, even with take away available, and the restaurant would have to throw out twelve $150 lobsters in addition to fruit and vegetables.
Southbank’s Red Emperor Chinese restaurant manager, Raymond Cheung, estimated the business lost 5 per cent of its annual takings by being closed on one of their busiest days of the year, Lunar New Year. The restaurant usually sees 450 guests per day on such a weekend and would be booked to capacity.
Red Emperor did see strong booking on the Lunar New Year eve and CZheung believes that things will pick up where they left off.
However, John Chan, general manager of Golden Dragon Palace is not so confident.
The Lower Templestowe venue lost about $70,000 in sales across Saturday and Sunday.
Chan feels that any more lockdowns will ruin the business.
“We take this one as an experience to see if we can survive or not,” he said.
Irit Jackson, 15th February 2021
