Several restaurants and bars in San Francisco were back on operation but losses are still unavoidable due to the fluctuating number of virus cases.
In just a night, one restaurant considered a total of $8,000 gone after cancellation was made because of COVID-19.
“We understand that emergencies happen, but it’s just difficult when so many emergencies are happening and folks are cancelling,” Kim Alter, chef and owner of Nightbird restaurant, said.
She is bouncing back on her feet as the last two weeks have been hard for her. The worst moment happened when a company scheduled out her boutique restaurant for the night but dropped the reservation.
“Two days before they cancelled due to new restrictions that they were going to put in their company and we learned a lesson, didn’t have strong protocol, cause we have never had somebody cancel a banquet before, we lost about 8-10 thousand dollars,” Alter said.
Alter is not alone facing the challenges. The same scenario was also experienced by Laurie Thomas, Golden Gate Restaurant Association head and owner of a couple of dining establishments, including Terzo.
“At Terzo we saw one and a half times the normal no-shows, but then we saw the walk-ins make up for that,” Thomas exclaimed.
Over the weekend, she said business appeared to be lifted again at several areas including the Fisherman’s Wharf. She attributed this partly to the fires close to Lake Tahoe, which caused customers in town and enticed others from out of town.
Alter, meanwhile, remains hopeful that things will turn better for her restaurant that suffered four cancellations on Tuesday because of confirmed COVID-19 cases.
“Which is a third of our dining room, we are nine tables and when four cancel it’s a pretty big chunk of what we do every night,” she said, as reported by ABC7.
“I think after this week we’re going to start seeing things settling out to a new normal,” Thomas, on the other hand, expressed.
