The Myth Of Contactless Dining & The Future Of Eating Out

While a post-COVID world looks almost parallel right now, the challenge for restaurants is going to be earning back the trust of their patrons, with less contact dining ideas, and utmost hygiene.

- Priyank Sukhija

It’s almost three months to the lockdown. However sad I might be feeling, on a personal level, it’s been about learning to live with it. This is something no one predicted, in our business or otherwise. It’s the first time, in our lifetimes, that we’re in a situation as dire, and it could happen again. There’s damage, to people, to lives, to businesses. We’re all thinking about how to control the damage, and about the future.

My employees are very supportive, most of them realise that the company has no revenue on today’s day. It could be the same situation for another month or two. We haven’t been able to pay complete salaries, because we have 1,100 employees. But, we’re making sure that right now, every employee has enough money to survive through these tough times. I can only manage that survival for one or two months. Beyond that, I don’t know if I’ll be able to be as supportive.

I’ve been communicating with most of my employees. Honestly, what’s more important than paying full salaries right now is being able to employ back all of them when we reopen. It’s going to be a horror show if we’re told to open with restrictions. If we open with restrictions, we’ll require the support of our vendors for a longer credit period, we won’t be able to pay those kinds of rents, and we might have to operate at 50 per cent of our capacity. That, of course, depends on if we’ll be able to even fill it. Even if we open in July or August, we’ll have to brace ourselves for a tough time.