Pune: Many restaurants in malls likely to reopen soon

Pune: A bulk of restaurants in the seven city-based malls are likely to reopen between this weekend and the next.
“Almost 60% of restaurants in the malls are closed as of now despite the withdrawal ofsome curbs. This is because a lot of resto service staff are still unavailable. Many of them are expected to join work by this Friday or Saturday, when many restaurants in the malls are likely to restart operations,” Surjit Singh Rajpurohit, chief operating officer of Amanora Mall, told TOI on Thursday.
Rajpurohit, who is also a member of the Shopping Centres Association of India, said, “There’s a feeling that the authorities may extend the mall operation deadlines in Pune to 10pm as per the state’s latest Break the Chain order. If this happens, then it could be an impetus for most of restaurants in the malls to reopen.”
The centre director at another large city-based mall said almost 50% of restaurants in the facility were still closed. “We think many more may open by this weekend and or next week. After the first round of curbs were lifted, almost 70% of restaurants had reopened in malls. This is likely to happen this time too, mostly by month-end. Many restaurants are currently waiting and watching,” he said.
A restaurateur said, “Some large restaurant brands are assessing the situation to see that nothing contrary to what is being claimed by the authorities happens in the next few days. It has to make business sense at the end of the day.”
The marketing manager at another mall in the Shivajinagar area told TOI, “Another reason why many restaurants have not opened is because of the rule on double vaccination of the mall staffers. Big retail stores have 100-200 employees and they can choose a good number of fully vaccinated staffers from among them to work at the outlet.”
The manager said, “This rule poses a problem for quick service restaurants, where the staff is limited. The number of fully vaccinated people in such outlets is low as most of their staffers are in the 18-44 age group and became eligible for the vaccine in May.”