China News Service, June 11. According to Singapore’s Lianhe Zaobao, Nu Liya, director of a restaurant in Singapore, said that during the second phase of the high-alert period, business fell by 90%, making it impossible to maintain operations for a long time.
"Although extending the ban on dine-in for a week does not seem to be long, it has a huge impact on business."
Although the government has stated that if the epidemic continues to be under control in the next few weeks, it will allow dine-in services for groups of up to five people to resume from June 21. However, the catering industry interviewed pointed out that the ban on dine-in will be extended for another week, and business will suffer. The serious impact will last more than one week, and the scheduled Father’s Day and next week’s dine-in reservations will have to be cancelled or postponed.
In order to control the new crown pneumonia epidemic in the community, Singapore was in the second stage of high-alert unblocking from May 16 to June 13, during which no dine-in was allowed.
LeVel33 restaurant general manager Peter also believes that the extension of the ban on dine-in means that their lower income days will also be extended.
He said that not only was the business of the restaurants he managed during the second phase of high-alert unblocking greatly affected, most of the business of his colleagues was less than half of last year's virus blockade measures.
Pierre revealed that the restaurant has been receiving reservation calls for Father's Day weekend on June 20. The reservation was full, but as the dine-in began on the 21st at the earliest, all reservations had to be postponed or cancelled.
Jinmao Market and Cooked Food Center hawker Wang Weiling said that during this period he could only provide take-out services, his business was 30% less than usual, but he insisted on continuing to operate and earning a little bit.
"If dine-in can be opened on June 21, I hope that more family customers will come back. But I don't know if the business will return to the previous level, so I won't order more ingredients. I need to observe the situation first."
Some citizens said in an interview that dine-in should be open to two people first, and then increase to five people after the epidemic becomes stable. It is more reasonable to do so.
She is worried that if the measures are relaxed too soon, the number of cases in the community may increase again.
Kwan Kwok Chung, President of the Singapore Restaurant Association, revealed that for every week of extension of the ban on dine-in, the accumulated cost of manpower and rent for some member restaurants of the association would be thousands of Singapore dollars to more than 500,000.
Although the association welcomes the extension of the employment subsidy program to assist members, he believes that other stakeholders such as mall owners should also bear the impact of not being able to eat in to tenants.
If you can't earn income on a regular basis, it will be difficult for tenants to pay the full rent.
He also urged the authorities to give priority to the vaccinations against COVID-19 for employees in the catering industry. After all, they are service providers who have daily contact with the public on the front lines.
(Song Huichun, Wang Kangwei, Liang Weikang)