COVID-19’s Impact on Pubs and Restaurants
The Coronavirus is having a significant impact on all businesses across the UK. Many SMEs will find it very difficult to navigate their way through this tough period and Pubs and Restaurants, in particular, will certainly struggle.
That’s because social gatherings are now seriously advised against and are a key aspect of the Pub environment – without gatherings, there are no customers. Furthermore, and perhaps more to the point, the UK government has now asked all Pubs and other hospitality venues such as restaurants to close their doors to the public to avoid mass gatherings. This will likely have serious financial implications for these businesses.
However, if your Pub has a kitchen you may still be able to service your customers through a takeaway service. Fortunately, the government has recognised this opportunity and has made it much easier to temporarily re-register your Pub or Restaurant into a takeaway.
Why You Should Re-Register your Pub/Restaurant as a Takeaway
There are numerous benefits to re-registering your Pub/Restaurant into a takeaway:
- It will allow you to still service some of your customers and maintain an ‘open for business’ status
- It will allow you to take in revenues from your food and thus help you keep on top of your overheads
- It will only be a temporary registration and so once this is all over you can easily regain your Public House or Restaurant registration
More Information About Re-Registering as a Takeaway
The government will introduce a time-limited permitted development right through secondary legislation (negative SI) to allow the temporary change of use of a pub (A4 – drinking establishment) and a restaurant (A3 – restaurants and cafes) to a hot-food take away for a period of up to 12 months only.
Businesses will be required to tell the local planning authority when the new use begins and ends.
For more information, you should visit this site here and contact this number (030 3444 0000) and ask about operating temporarily as a takeaway.
More Tips to help your Pub/Restaurant survive COVID-19
If you decide to operate as a takeaway during this time, you should let your customers know about it! You need to be on social media posting about your new service and updating your website accordingly.
You also need to consider how you will deliver your food to your customers and set a distance cap so that your drivers are not going to arrive at your customers’ houses with cold food.
We also have another great article with guidance for businesses to navigate the Coronavirus which you can find here.
