This is according to the CEO of the Restaurant Association of South Africa Wendy Alberts.

What was anticipated to be three weeks of lockdown ended up lasting over five months, leaving the sector reeling and thousands of people without jobs.  

“What we can tell you from the survey that we ran a few weeks ago, we are only running at about 60% budgeted turnover. In some areas it is as low as 40% in some areas we have seen highs of about 90%.

“However, it is important that we put things into perspective. While the restaurant business looks quite busy, there is also a massive amount of debt that is being accumulated. 

“There is also a large portion of restaurants that remain close. If we put all of this into perspective, we still haven’t brought all the people back to work. So, we are only sitting on around 400 000 permanently unemployed staff.”

One such restaurant that was forced to close its doors is ‘The Whippet’ in Melville. 

The restaurant, which was the second of its kind in Johannesburg, closed its doors at the start of September. 

The Whippet in Melville employed 24 staff members and began operating in July 2019, eight months before the lockdown. 

“What people don’t understand is that it is not just 23 or 24 people,” says co-owner Divan Botha.  

“We are talking about people who have dependents. We are talking about 100 or even 150 people that are dependent on these jobs. That is the heartbreaking part. We are a people business at the end of the day. That one really knocked us.

“When we started the work that we do, we said that we wanted to create 100 jobs in three years and we were perfectly on track to be able to do that.”

Botha believes if the lockdown had only lasted three weeks or four weeks, the business would never have had to close down. 

“I think we had enough working capital to carry us for like three to four weeks. If the lockdown was four weeks, we still would’ve been able to make it, but at one stage you run out of capital and you can’t sustain it.”  

Botha is also unhappy with government and the slow pace in which it has moved to assist small businesses. 

He believes if government had been proactive, such as in the UK, then thousands more jobs would’ve been saved.

“The government lags in terms of the support that they are giving. Things like the government bank loans conditions were only changed about four weeks ago to make it more accessible. I think the take up of that is not even 8% or 9%. 

“The commercial banks also gave some relief but that is also expensive, it is still a commercial bank that needs to make money. If the government was able to move quicker with their working capital loans, that would’ve had the biggest impact.

“Government is simply too slow to react to anything. It is an ineffective state. If we had a government that was agile in a startup, we could’ve saved thousands of jobs.”

It has been estimated that at least 3 million people will lose their jobs in South Africa as a result of Covid-19. 

The last Quarterly Labour Force released by Statistics SA, for the first three months of 2020, confirmed the country’s unemployment rate as 30.1%.

This number is still expected to skyrocket as a result of Covid-19.

While the restaurant industry has predicted that hundreds of thousands of people have lost their livelihoods, Alberts believes that the scale of the unemployment crisis in the industry is still unknown. 

“We don’t quite understand the devastation that Covid-19 has had on our industry, but we have called on the Department of Trade and Industry to fund the survey where we can determine how many livelihoods have been affected. How many bars have closed? How many restaurants have closed through the different stages of opening? 

“Certain establishments have remained closed due to the regulations and what the liquor licenses determine for the operations.

“In the week or so, we will be putting out a survey to establish the numbers that we got on where exactly we are. There needs to be a full-scale audit that needs to be done in the restaurants industry on who has closed and who hasn’t closed.”

Last week, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the country would be moving to lockdown level 1. 

Social gatherings have increased under level 1 and the curfew has also been extended to 12 am. 

This, however, is a little too late for many in the sector. 

Jacaranda FM