BENGALURU: Sunday morning masala dosay and coffee at MTR was an old Bangalore thing. Purchasing a token, waiting for your turn and managing to get a table were some of the small joys back then. The city seems to be buzzing once again, with traffic trickling back to pre-Covid times and people braving the virus to get back to normal life. But six months down the pandemic, restaurants, which were once buzzing in Bengaluru, find residents to be cautiously optimistic. As Hemamalini Maiya, owner, MTR, puts it, the new normal is that the take-away as a percentage of revenue is higher than pre-Covid times. “We have been open with 50 per cent seating, but don’t know when dine-in will bounce back to old levels. August was better than the previous months...
So it gives us hope,” she says.
Crockery and cutlery cleaned at 82 degree Celsius; restrooms disinfected every hour or after every use; no touching and no trials or exchanges for merchandise are some of the measures in place at popular hangout Hard Rock Cafe on St Marks Road. This is in addition to mandatory masks, social distancing, sanitisation, temperature checks and digital health declaration forms for all guests, tables with six-feet distance between them; staff sporting face shields; digital menus and contactless payment options.
“These are unprecedented times and restaurateurs are faced with challenges with regard to fixed costs, high commission models with partners, fund management and staffing. But above all, while we take all the necessary precautions, it is of paramount importance to win the faith of the customers about their protection,” says Akanksha Chaudhary, assistant director – Marketing and Sales. Hard Rock Cafe Bengaluru reopened for delivery and takeaway in May, and for dine-in in the month of June. As per the new orders from the government, permitting the sale of liquor, they have begun the service on tables.
Since opening, they have seen almost a 30 per cent uptake in footfalls, and reopened Hard Rock Cafe Whitefield for dine-in on September 4. “With the launch of the vaccine and decrease in daily local cases, we are hopeful that Bangalore’s bar scene will revive by early next year,” says Chaudhary.
Waiters balancing plates of dosa and serpentine queues outside popular South Bengaluru haunt Vidyarthi Bhavan were a common sight until earlier this year. The restaurant, which reopened for service from August, has a seating capacity for 140, but are limiting it to only 60 at the moment. “Each table is partitioned with a glass shield, where only two people are allowed to dine-in on the opposite corner of the table,” says Sreedhar S, manager of the restaurant.
Catching up on the new ways of running the business, the 77-year-old dosa joint started home delivery for the first time recently. “The pandemic has been tough. The business we make from home deliveries might not be the same as ones we were getting before, but it was better than nothing,” adds Sreedhar. (With inputs from Monika Monalisa)