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MAY / JUNE . 2022 | VOL.25
Covid and the foodservice sector
Taking stock, restaurants. Takeaways, pubs
have survived so far, helped up by
government support and the discovery of
delivery. Some sectors, feeding in hospitals
and care home, for example, have hardly
Covid and the foodservice sector been affected, but others, such as businesses
associated with travel, accommodation or
Track the performance of the food service workplace feeding, are still trading well below
sector over the two years of covid, and you historical levels.
see a sinuous line that grows, declines, shows
false dawns, but above all, describes the But it was not to last and anyway, overseas
performance of the thousands of businesses, visitors who contribute perhaps 10% of
and the millions of lives that depend on foodservice turnover at the peak of summer,
them. were absent. As the autumn approached and
then turned into winter, the sinuous line
It starts in March 2020. March is normally the started to fall. Delta appeared and
month when the food service sector wakes restaurants, pubs and quick service
up – Valentine’s Day has just passed, Easter is businesses were once again closed for
on the way, and warm summer weather Christmas. But delivery continued to provide
beckons on the horizon. And so it was in a lifeline for many businesses.
March 2020 – at least that’s what the first
three weeks of the month looked like. And With the onset of spring and the first
then? Lockdown for the last week and all of anniversary of covid, vaccines held open the
April and May. Well into June, restaurants, promise of controlling the pandemic and the
coffee shops, takeaways, pubs, workplaces, government opened up the food service
and hotels were shut. The only sectors that sector again. So business started to revive
were still operational were hospitals and care during the first few months of 2021. By the
homes, the military and prisons plus some summer it was back to the level seen in
hotels that catered for front line workers. The March 2020 and, although that was good to
sinuous line plunged. Even so, restaurants see, it still meant that business was 10% or so
and takeaways discovered that delivery would below what it should have been given that by
keep (some of) their customers happy and now it was summer, and there had been
would provide some income (even though its more than 2% inflation as well.
profitability was questionable).
Autumn started off all right, and then the
And then it appeared that perhaps covid may omicron variant hit. Another lockdown was
not have really been as bad as it might have introduced, and Christmas saw a closed
seemed, the government launched the Eat restaurant, pub and hotel sector for a second
Out to Help Out scheme and, at last, warmer year. But as 2022 started, it was clear that the
weather meant that people could again meet new variant was not going to overload the
outside. Restaurants and pubs started, NHS as its forebears had done in the late
tentatively, to open up many of them making spring and the winter of 2020, so the
imaginative use of outside spaces. business started to rebuild.
