The remarkable resilience of restaurants battling through Lockdown 2.0

Christmas is everything to restaurants — a good December can bring in enough to cover three lean months — but things won’t be the same this year. Furlough and rates relief only go so far and without the usual boozy work dos and last-minute lunches with friends, restaurants are facing a catastrophic lack of cash.    

With a government seemingly incapable of much-need clarity around reopening dates and conditions — goodness knows what tier we’ll be in if and when lockdown lifts — too many places have already gone, while the rest teeter uneasily on a knife-edge. This year, though, has revealed an astonishing resilience in hospitality.  

Here, chefs and restaurateurs across the capital paint a portrait of an industry that is endlessly tenacious, creative and resourceful but one that, in spite of its optimism, is still in critical need of support.  

We opened Mei Mei in November 2019; we were expecting to expand to a number of sites in London, but this year has completely put a stop on everything. It’s been an upheaval and it’s definitely had an emotional toll on me, the team, business partners, investors. All the information from the government has been drip fed to us, not given up front – which I understand, because they haven’t gone through it before – but it could have been handled better.

This lockdown is completely different; online sales are saturated, everyone’s pivoted, but we’ve expanded our range to include meal kits; this week we’re launching our Singaporean feasts. We’re partnering with Deliveroo again – despite those fees  – but we’d rather use Big Night, or our own courier. We’re trying to stay relevant as a brand, and we’re trying any revenue streams to make our business more [financially] sustainable. It just feels like we have to challenge everything; we win some, we lose some. I’m trying to stay positive but it’s a lot. I call it restaurant insomnia; up at 4am, thinking about delivery, revenue, being consistent. Managing couriers and packages, the constant costs that come in; there’s so much uncertainty, it’s nerve wracking.  

Restaurants are restaurants for a reason. It’s our birthday today, we’ve survived a year. But we’re hospitality: I love seeing our regulars, I see their face and I know what their order will be. I miss that. I don’t want that to change  – if I wanted going to do an e-commerce shop, I wouldn’t be here.  

For a lot of restaurants that have just opened, it’s difficult to stay relevant compared to the big names. I think the bleak reality is: you have to use us or lose us.  

Mei Mei, Unit 52 Rochester Walk,  SE1 9AF, meimei.uk

We’ve gone to enormous lengths to ensure we offered a safe space – it’s so, so important – and I think as an industry we achieved that; we kept customers safe, we kept staff safe. All of the plans we had in place to rotate staff in case someone got ill, none of that came to pass because no-one got infected. So this second lockdown, even if we’d privately considered it, still felt unfair, rather like the curfew measures – knee-jerk, ill thought through and impractical. That’s frustrating.  

Our delivery services have kept the team gainfully employed but we’re hoping we’ll be allowed to open in December, that’ll keep up afloat. Closing a restaurant is an incredibly expensive business, there are thousands and thousands of pounds each week to pay, and with the two days notice, there were so many wasted ingredients. Considering how hard we work to stay afloat in normal circumstances, this time around is so hard.

I’m not going to lie to you, we’re really touch-and-go here financially. We’re trying to trade our way out of enormous losses from the beginning of the year and we were just getting to the point in September and October that we were no longer losing money hand over fist.  

I’m trying to stay positive, and imaging that we will try as we will always do to battle through. Look, no-one in this business is here to make money – you do it because you love it, you relish it, you believe in it – but I can’t for the life of me see how we’ll survive if lockdown is extended. This enforced closure feels performative, arbitrary and unfair and if it’s extended, it’s pretty much a death sentence. This could be the nail in the coffin for the independent restaurant industry in London.  

God knows what’s going on inside our government, it seems to be a complete black box, and there’s Brexit bubbling in the background. There’s a wanton disregard for the impact of their decisions; it really belies the lack of seriousness in the current political class.  

Orasay, 31 Kensington Park Road, W11 2EU, orasay.london

Brunswick House, 30 Wandsworth Road, SW8 2LG, brunswickhouse.london

We turned four this year, and it was so exciting, we felt we were really in the flow of things. Then this came out of nowhere – the first time around, we actually closed before the government mandated it; the dwindling bookings were heartbreaking, and we wanted to keep our staff and guests safe. But we’ve tried to be quite positive about it all; we viewed it as a challenge, as a time to re-engineer the world around us, to become the kind of place we wanted to be.  

I’ve think we’ve always thought of Jikoni as a brand, more than just a restaurant. It’s a book now, another arm is Comfort & Joy, our vegan and vegetarian meal boxes. Another is retail, the dining room is selling chutneys and goods and we’ve just partnered with Supermarket of Joy. It’s always been part of our vision, but the pandemic forced our hand and we’ve had to think on our feet. It’s made us very agile business owners, knowing when to duck and dive and be flexible.

I think we’ve benefitted from being very neighbourhood focussed; we have a lot of regulars and their extraordinary generosity has been heartwarming to see. We feel our community want to come back, and are just hoping and praying for 2021 to be better.

Jikoni, 19-21 Blandford St, W1U 3DH, jikonilondon.com

It’s a strange, unique occurrence, I was not thinking we’d have to ever go into a second lockdown. In terms of the business, we have to think about the morale; people are wondering what’s going to happen to them.  

If there is any extension of the lockdown, it’s going to impact us quite badly. We can pretty much make it until December 2 because we’re in the kitchen, doing lots of work. It actually feels like we really need it: we can think about what we’ve done and we can think about how we can come back with a bang, with a relaunch, so we’re quite excited for that. It’s going to be totally new: the entire menu, the service. I feel a lot more confident than when we first opened and it’s going to be much more like what I envisioned, which it wasn’t when I first opened.

Still, we need clarity soon. We are working hard, we are creating for the opening, but we need the government to say: you are opening on these days, because we are not quite certain of what’s happening.  

The vaccine gives up optimism, so we’re hoping the government will allow hospitality to open back up. We had bookings for December, but we’ve called people to cancel. We hope people want to come to restaurants after this second lockdown – and spend a lot of money!  

Akoko, 21 Berners St, W1T 3LP, akoko.co.uk

One thing we did in the first lockdown, like a lot of others, was turning things into a positive, being proactive as much as you can – for yourself, for the team, for the restaurant. I worked with Only a Pavement Away, working with homeless people, I’m still doing that and lots of people are doing stuff for charities, for the NHS, the hotels are offering space. And shows how good we are in a time of need, and that’s so encouraging .

When we were open, we accomplished so much in such a short time frame; 4 AA rosettes, the best reviews of my career. Now we’ve launched Musette; we basically made our takeaway more casual, we weren’t attempting to do “Muse at Home.” It’s more basic, family at home meals. We’ve two different ranges: one to chuck it in the oven, the other that needs a little finishing at home. I think for anyone in the restaurnaty world, you’re always looking for ways to keep your business going. 

But December is crucial, and the other thing is this tiering system; when London went from one to two, we immediately had 50+ cancellations, everyone did. And restaurants are probably the safest place you can go – we’re all absolutely rigorous; when you work so closely in a kitchen, you have to be. When we open again, tiering should be based on different businesses; we’re fine dining, quiet, tables are apart. Same with this 10pm curfew, which is a totally pointless objective, it just causes pandemonium, and ruins that last hour when people want to enjoy themselves.  

Muse by Tom Aikens, 38 Groom Place, SW1X 7BA, musebytomaikens.co.uk

The sandwich shop will be fine. It’s collection and takeaway only so it feels a little bit like maxssandwichshop.com rather than Max’s Sandwich Shop, but it’s safe and simple and it’s working perfectly well.  I’ve tried to pivot as little as possible, because I think it’s very easy to get a bit lost, so now I’m handing the sandwiches through the door instead of over the counter. There’s obviously no joy in it, there’s very little room for fun.

But this is the weirdest time in a generation, so I’ll just wait, thanks. And when it can open all guns blazing, I will do, and I’ll enjoy it. At the moment, I’m going to sit it out;  I’m aware this is an extremely shit situation for a very large number of people, we’ve just been very lucky. But we’re just battening down the hatches because I feel quite freaked out by this Covid stuff.  

If my trade was based on tourists and office workers, I’d be buggered, but it’s not - it’s based on the nice people of Finsbury Park, and they all seem to be eating sandwiches. It’s about being in the neighbourhood. There’s a real sense of community - everyone helping out each other, and in the weirdest time of our life, anything we can do to help out, the better.  

Max’s Sandwich Shop, 19 Crouch Hill, N4 4AP, maxssandwichshop.com

Hospitality is about feeding the hungry, but it’s also about being a destination of joy and entertainment. For everyone, especially those on their own, restaurants offer a place to meet family, friends. I think it’s already a complete write-off for December because people can’t plan — you need to give people a few weeks’ notice for Christmas; it’s now impossible to do that. We’ve lost families going out, which is a very important part of Chinese culture. 

Many, many of the Chinese community have felt prejudice too — the students don’t feel welcome to return — and then the older Chinese and Asian community are not coming out as much. It feels unnecessary for restaurants to stay closed and it’s affecting these places, especially as Chinatown and W1 has rents and rates 50-times higher than the average for a restaurant. Also, the head chefs spend 20, 30, 40 years to get where they are, they don’t have degrees, they can’t retrain.  

At the moment, we’re relying on the goodwill of regulars — this year has shown that a loyal following is instrumental to survival.

Dumplings Legend, 15-16 Gerrard St, W1D 6JE, chinatown.co.uk

Geoff Leong is also part of the core team of CARG (Covid-19 Anti-Racism Group), carg.info

London’s a very complicated place, and it will recover, but Christmas is a busted flush – people have been told not to go out for so long. If we can open in December, we will – in restaurants, there’s something that beats, there’s a heart – and there are a lot of great operators doing things really well. But every time you shut, it gets harder to reopen. 

We’re selling our takeaway pies now, all made by hand and they’re selling out. We’re happy doing that, it gives us pleasure and it’s a two way thing; people are coming back two or three times, and our online wine sales have been great, a nice surprise.  

We’ve been around a long time but for new places, the market’s ridiculously congested. It doesn’t take long for the big players to step in; UberEats, Deliveroo, Amazon, the supermarkets – they’ve all made money. For the restaurants, it comes down to the individual – are you going to pay yourself? 

Someone asked me about closed businesses the other day and it was like trying to count the floors of a skyscraper. I didn’t know where to start.  

St John has sites across the city, details can be found at stjohnrestaurant.com

Largely, I’ve been surprised by the innovation and generosity of the industry, even when we sleep-walked in to the first lockdown. There was a day or two of not knowing what to to but very quickly people jumped on social media to share recipes, to do what they could for the NHS and the homeless.  It was heartwarming to see an industry on its knees constantly looking at ways to make people happier. 

I think London is hurt, and London’s hospitality is hurt particularly. It’s very tough but I think this time around, people have been much quicker with meal kits, nationwide delivery. At the best of times, we’ve always been innovative and creative, but now more than ever. We have our Cinnamon kits, so we can offer the experience nationwide.  

The worst thing about lockdown is: we miss the customers. I think that genuine interaction, we miss that. I think after the first lockdown, people realised takeaway was not a substitute to eating in a restaurant. And there’s still a lot of washing up and cleaning to be done - !

It’s not uncommon for a good December to be the equivalent of a lean quarter, two or three months worth of trade in three weeks. It reaches a crescendo, tops out just before the 20, and then Christmas lunch is a big thing – it’s the biggest lunch of the year for us. This year, all those numbers will be greatly tempered. It’s going to be a harder, tougher, and very different Christmas to what we’re used to.  

Any other crash, the dot com bubble, 2008, whatever – nothing comes close to this. This is the entire economy, the entire sector. You just try to do everything, you try anything. This won’t be the end of the hospitality industry, but it may be the end of it as we know it. But it will morph and it will come back, and those that will adapt better than the others will do best.

The Cinnamon Collection has sites across the city, details can be found at thecinnamoncollection.com

We learned from last time, we prepped, we had emergency plans, so everything’s better this time around. The government’s been shambolic in terms of communication but we realised that from day one, so we had scenarios ready to go, so that we could just push the button and go. 

We’ve got the ready meals coming out, but the real thing’s been Shop Cuvée. Having a retail side has really helped us with marketing and being able to sell online. Normally, you’re limited with what you can promote as a restaurant – it’s seen as uncouth, it’s not cool to do it – but a shop gives you that opportunity. We’re channeling our hospitality instincts into it, too; we run the shop like a restaurant, paying attention to the ambience, the lighting, we give a super warm welcome, we treat people like we’re serving a table, not running a shop. We pay attention to the ambience, the lighting, we offer a super warm welcome.

But as soon as we’re allowed to, we’ll be open. It’s what we love. But all this is extremely damaging to the industry and I personally believe the damage isn’t clear yet because no-one is going to be shouting about losing their business. The whole industry will be smaller and there’s going to be a bit of recalibration.  

Top Cuvée, 177B Blackstock Road, Highbury East, N5 2LL, topcuvee.com

Shop Cuvée, 189 Blackstock Rd, Highbury East, N5 2LL, shopcuvee.com

Lockdown two came with a kind of begrudging shrugging of the shoulders and just dealing with it, rather than the blind panic the first induced. It’s just become part of life now – it’s not pleasant, but we get with it.  

Everyone’s taken pay cuts and even with furlough, it’s painful for the staff, especially with no tips. As a business, we’re trying to plan to reopen on December 3, but we’re not sure in what capacity – we don’t know what tier we’ll be in, which makes it difficult.  

Different people deal with it in different ways. We haven’t gone the takeaway route as we’re not in high footfall areas – not now, at least – but we’re going to do some brilliant Kitty Fisher’s hampers: it’ll all be restaurant quality food, chutneys, pickles, all the lovely Christmassy stuff homemade and bespoke. All the big hamper suppliers are completely sold out – it’s disconcerting that everyone’s doing the same thing, but we’ll stick to our values and make ours fit with what we’re about; we just have to keep our heads down and keep going.  

Kitty Fisher’s, 10 Shepherd Market, W1J 7QF, kittyfishers.com

Cora Pearl, 30 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, WC2E 8NA, corapearl.co.uk

The worst thing is the uncertainty, we’ve dealt with changes constantly. We opened, then it was rule of six, then the curfew, then Tier 2. That’s made it very difficult to operate; reducing covers, reducing staff, all while trying to give customers a nice experience.  

Being only six months old, it’s really very hard. The bank has the final say and we couldn’t secure loans, so without another revenue stream, we’d have emptied our bank accounts. Last week we just launched a meal kit offering regional Iranian dishes made with British ingredients and there seems to be an interest. It’s almost like opening a second restaurant: you have to do your market research, work out your pricing, delivery, packaging, and you have all the competition. 

The profit on delivery is almost non-existent, but we wanted to keep the relationship with our customers. It’s all down to them, and December is make or break for us.  We’re already seeing people going under – it makes you wonder, as a one restaurant operation, if you’re doing the right thing to keep on fighting and fighting to survive.

Nutshell, 30 St Martin's Lane, WC2N 4ER, nutshelllondon.co.uk

Lockdown 2.0 is incredibly frustrating but, having been through it once, this time is less stressful: more seamless ad we had a very clear plan in place, which we’ve had in place since we’ve re-opened. But while it’s easier, we’re still still trading at 35 per cent of pre-lockdown levels. It’s manageable for a very short term period time but only because of furlough  and landlord deals.

Could we survive if we don’t reopen on December 2? Yes, but only because of all our plans; we have new channels for our product, including the Ambassador General Store. But if we hadn’t done anything in response to lockdown one, it would probably be game over. The platforms mean we have a reason to continue.

Our business – this business, hospitality – is relentless, it’s 365 days a year, 24/7. You have to deal with the pressure in a calm and constructive way. If you found it overwhelming, you’d struggle to continue. But now, you fundamentally feel the responsibility to the people who work for you. Everything we’ve worked towards in 12 years is at stake.  

There’s a full array of issues and challenges to address, but we’re been working hard on the creative side, creating the delivery and adapting to the rules. We’ve had lots to work on financing wise: cash flow, making sure investors are happy, redundancies – which we’ve had to do – furlough… it’s a full on business reset. But fundamentally, we’ll be a better business coming out of it. We’re more resilient, we’re more agile.  

There are business opportunities coming that weren’t there before – some will come out of this, though they may happen at other people’s expense. There’ll be property opportunities:  landlords are resetting their expectations for rent, there are fully fitted sites we could use once we’re through this. You have to always look forward, we still have the ambition to grow the business.  

We are long term believers that London will bounce back to be the vibrant eating scene that it always is.  

JKS has sites across the city, details can be found at jksrestaurants.com

The Ambassador’s General Store is here

After I came to terms with things, I found purpose in helping others and giving back and I felt extremely excited – I felt energised. This lockdown has been so interesting, you know, there’s been good and bad – letting people go, it was heartbreaking, and we’ve had people move away – but I never thought I’d have the opportunity to almost start fresh. I mean, I have the recipes and the restaurant space but just – this is a clean slate now.

I couldn’t be happier with Claridge’s. I’m from Switzerland and I think London is as close as I’m ever going to get to be home. In my career, all those years, I’ve travelled so far, so many places – I’ve been right through Asia and South America and other places – but you know, I can see a world in maybe 18 months when people like me who always have travelled for work are going to wonder whether it’s worth it. 

I want my life to be closer to now than what it was before the pandemic.  I’m young to have achieved what I have done; when Eleven Madison Park was named the best restaurant in the world, it was less satisfying than you would think. For a long time, people always asked: “What’s next?” It was a harder question to answer than I would say. But this pandemic has helped me find an answer. I look around and see these neighbourhoods with people struggling and it’s deeply touched me. 

Luxury has changed as well; brands that don’t have a higher purpose will soon feel irrelevant. I have plans for Davies & Brook, to do with nearby schools and education, I want to cook meals with a class, maybe, or do a school lunch or something. We are looking at two or three not-for-profit organisations, we want to find good partners. 

For the moment, we have an exceptional team in place, I trust them fully, I just miss them and I want to be back working with them in the kitchen. It’s hard not to be together.

Davies & Brook, Claridge’s, Brook Street,  W1K 4HR, claridges.co.uk