Tuesday 25 May 2021, Day 86 of Level 1 😷
Corona Gratitude 🙏
#Gratitude for a day which started out with mist after the rain last night, and cleared this afternoon to lovely sunshine; for a busy working day; for a walk to Woolworths, getting some steps, bumping into Thomas and Haakon, the German swallows whom I haven’t seen in ages, catching up on our restaurant adventures; for a lovely dinner with Greg Loyd, whom I had not yet met, the co-owner of Villa Rosa Guest House in Sea Point, dining at Utopia, arriving as the moon moved over the city centre, a day before Full Moon; and for being happy, healthy, and free. Continue reading →
The South African Restaurant industry is very close to collapse, and is in urgent need of a cash flow injection to survive, a major finding of a study conducted last month, as a follow-up to a survey which the Esus-Group conducted in June 2020. The lifting of the alcohol ban from midnight tonight is a step in the right direction but the Curfew must be lifted too and the international borders must be opened, says Restaurateur Giles Blanc, and Co-Director of the Esus-Group, which has international Hospitality interests, and owns The 41 and The Korner restaurants in Cape Town. Blanc announced on Friday that he will soon reopen The 41 for the first time since Lockdown commenced in March. 
Since the Corona Virus Lockdown twelve days ago, I have received a flood of What’s App messages, having been added to a restaurant group (Hospitality Leadership) by a restaurateur. I have observed the concerned restaurant owners move from jumping to turn their businesses into take-away food delivery operations, until that door was closed to the industry; to keeping their staff paid and covering their own expenses by applying to the UIF and other Corona Financial support packages announced by the government; to looking into the future and making plans for their businesses reopening, even though not many are optimistic that it will happen on the 17th of April.