Pune: Rumours, confusion around Covid curbs hit business at many city restaurants

Maharashtra government had declared night curfew in the state from 9 PM to 6 AM for New Year’s eve but had kept restaurants out of the purview of this order. However, according to Chef Navtej Sawhney, Owner of ‘Arthur’s Theme’, rumours that restaurants might shut early in the night affected business.

“For New Year, we have loads of reservation, but because of this (rumour), people started calling us to ask whether we are open or not. So, we had to call our reserved guests to inform them that we were open. In the end, we were able to get 80 per cent of our bookings for the night but the number of walk-in dining was not up to our expectation,” he said.

A similar sentiment was shared by Palash Roy, Manager of ‘Baan Tao’, Hyatt Pune, who said the restaurant saw “low footfall and faced a lot of cancellation due to the night curfew and restriction on traffic.” In total, 20 to 25 tables at the restaurant got cancelled.

Abhishek Khan, manager of ‘Prem Restaurant’, too, said that emergence of the new variant coupled with rumours has had an adverse effect on the business. “Even though we were open till midnight, our restaurant got empty before 11 PM,” he added.

According to Sanjeev Dutt, General Manager of ‘German Bakery’, the footfall at the Law college road outlet was low as few of the roads such as FC road were closed for vehicle movement. “However, at Koregaon Park German Bakery, we had a good footfall not just on the eve of the New Year but also on January 1, thanks to the Mumbai crowd which came in and filled up the hotels in the area due to fear of night curfew in the state capital,” he added.

Dr Sonam Kapse, owner of ‘Terrasinne’, was optimistic that the industry would tide over the current crisis. “Even though we are struggling with 50 per cent seating capacity, we are satisfied with the current scenario as having some business is better than having no business at all. We hope things get better for everybody,” Kapse said.