After a long time in hibernation I’m one week away from launching GL50 at home which will be our takeaway offering (starts on the 11th of July). Two weeks away from opening the restaurant doors for our guests again (16th of July). Today as I write this is the first day restaurants and pubs can re open and I’m sure the center of town is very busy presumably full of people getting jolly or just straight up battered!
I wish I could but for me the opening that really counts is the parks! I’m gonna take my son on a park crawl when he wakes up. Hes been handling the lock down pretty well but he wants to go on the swings as much as I want a cold pint I think.
For our second opening I think I’m more scared than I was the first time, I’m bricking it. When you open a restaurant you expect a slow start and you aim to build up that reputation as quickly as you can and hope your guests tell their friends and they tell their friends…. This re opening is so unpredictable and unseen by anyone in the world before, that its enough to drive you mad. All I have are questions and mainly questioning of my own decisions, because fuck knows if opening on the 16th is a stroke of genius or way to tentative and if I did open tonight we could make £3K ??? Will there be any guests at all? Will the spend per head drop by a significant amount? Will the first two weeks be mental and everyone spend a shit load and then no one comes out until Christmas?!
There is no one you can turn to to ask, there is no historical events like this that can be looked back on. In America they opened bars and a week later locked down the town/city due to a spike in the virus. The last point is really why I think… just wait a week or so to re open and see what happens See if the general public do stick to the rules each place asks them to, let them get used to being allowed out and then also see what can be learnt in those two weeks that can help me. If the town gets locked down again, to re open and then to re close would be the worst case scenario. A few of my fellow restaurateurs and publicans are opening to day and I’ll wait to hear their feedback which we all hope is that of a good time had by all and guidelines being followed by everyone.
Speaking of the guidelines, I’m feeling confident that we can adhere to most of them in GL50. We have a really nice sized dining room so spaced tables are no issue. We have a nicely placed fire exit which I almost made the front door before we opened but now will be the exit to ensure our customers don’t have to pass each other on entry and exit. We only work with one front of house normally so we don’t need to worry about lots of bodies passing through the dining space. I will be the only chef bringing out the majority of the food unless we have a table of 6 but again this reduces the staff all needing to go in and out of the kitchen and dining room which is advised to be as minimal as possible. My chefs each have their own working area so can work without fear of close contact and when close contact maybe impossible to avoid my good friend Kati is making us some sleek black face masks. We have some really cool wooden wine boxes which we will use to contain all the things normally out on the tables like cutlery, menus and napkins which can all be pre filled and on the tables for when guests arrive. We never re lay our tables anyway, we have always given the guests the table for the whole night so after everyone leaves we can easily deep clean the whole room ready for the following nights service. We will use timers even more than before by having one times set for 20 mins and each time it goes off we all wash our hands, another for every hour when we shall all sanitize our areas.
All the planning and all of these things I’ve just mentioned have taken a lot of time to decide on and it all sounds straight forward but running a kitchen and getting all your prep done on time isn’t easy most days and when all these things need to be added into the mix, then we shall see how we get on…
We have also taken this down time to paint the kitchen (in anti bacterial paint), the outside front of the restaurant which I’ve wanted to tidy up since taking over the lease. We have done the skirting boards in the restaurant and the banisters as well as window frames in the bar! All the things we just didn’t quite get around to doing but when your open struggle to fine the time to do it all. After all the work I really hope the customers are out there and the general public will choose to spend their money with the small independent restaurants. Without that support then there will be a lot less restaurants in your town or city.
Jonascooks 