What a crazy few months it's been. Obviously I have not been keeping this up, and I'm sure most people can understand why. The weekend of December 19th was the first full weekend me and my partner have both taken off together, and we did so after lots of planning to attend my brothers wedding. However once we had left Sydney a couple of days earlier the cases started to skyrocket, with the lockdown announced a day before the wedding. We went from being fully booked for over a week and coming off the back of our best week we've ever had to no bookings, and the worst week we've ever had. All this alone isn't so bad however this time we received absolutely no support from the government. In 2 days we lost all the money we had saved as a safety net over the last year, which was very little considering our capacity has been legally restricted since March and we have been forced to hire an extra staff member for cleaning, while receiving absolutely no support since September.
The challenges of running a restaurant through COVID and especially a new one are exasperated by the lack of financial support coupled with the forced increased spending and reduced capacities. I have no interest in politics and follow no political persuasions although it is very difficult to stay detached while we watch the leaders take credit for the hard work we have been putting in to support our staff, with no support from them. That being said we are so lucky to be in this part of the world, and my focus remains on achieving the goals of this restaurant, I am lucky not to have the time to be concerned with the intricacies of politics.
Enough of the negatives though, back to the positives that are very similar to the last lockdown it shows how amazing the community support around us is, and this is something that has surprised me the most as we have not been open long. On top of this our new manager and our amazing team have been so supportive and put in such hard work to support the business, especially as both me and my partner look to take a step back to find a job that will actually pay us enough to live off until the pandemic comes to an end and the restaurant can function properly again.
The final thing that happened since our last post is we unfortunately did not win Northern Beaches Restaurant of the Year at the Local Business Awards. This was not too hard a loss to take as we were not expecting to win, however we were disappointed none of the competition bothered to show up to the event after we closed the restaurant and brought our whole team, it would have definitely been nice to meet some of the other staff from the other venues to discuss the difficulties of COVID. The positive from this is it keeps us on our toes and motivates us to continue building the best restaurant on the Northern Beaches.
I will try to post more updates here, though I know it is not read by many hopefully the few who do read this will gain a more in depth insight into not only our restaurant but the challenges the industry is facing at the moment.
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