Holiday parties are back again this year after they were canceled by the pandemic in 2020, ABC7 reported.
Waterbar Restaurant’s David Hanna said it is a very busy season again.
“Very, very busy. We’ve had a couple of buyouts. We’ve had about five parties per week,” Hanna said.
The whole industry experienced the same, but over the past few weeks, something hindered the busy season.
Bay Area events company, Fulcrum Group’s CEO Liz Curtis said that businesses are feeling the effect of the new COVID-19 variant.
“I’d say about 25 percent of our orders have been canceled this week,” she said.
Apart from canceled plans, there were also several parties that wanted to alter their programs, Curtis said.
“We’ve also seen a lot of orders for tents rise. We’re maxed out on tents right now. So I think that people are switching their holiday parties to their backyards,” Curtis said.
The process, however, does not only include booking reservations alone.
San Francisco’s Conqueta owner Christopher River said that his dining establishment accommodates many parties during the holiday but not all attendees on the reservations appeared.
“We had a lot of events where, you know, let’s say if it was a party of 20 that were coming in, and then six of them would show up because five of them got COVID and the rest of them were exposed,” Rivera said.
Rivera remains grateful that the parties they hosted became a success even with the threat of the omicron variant in the dining industry.
“With omicron, things might slow down again. So thank God we were this busy for almost the whole month of December because I don’t know what January is going to be like,” said Rivera.
