Outdoor restaurants and bars will start reopening as soon as Sunday, providing that they meet the necessary safety requirements.
“From 7 June, 2020, in Grand Cayman and Cayman Brac, restaurants and bars will be able to serve customers on any patio or other outdoor area which forms a part of the premises of the bar or restaurant,” Premier Alden McLaughlin confirmed at last Friday’s COVID-19 press briefing.
For Christopher ‘Jiffo’ Robinson, who owns and operates two bars and a restaurant on Grand Cayman, the announcement is welcomed news after having enduring more than two-and-a-half months without sales.
“No money being made, bills to be paid, I don’t know what we are going to have to do to get through this, but it is not going to be easy,” said Robinson, who runs the Jungle Bar and Lounge, Jiffo’s Bar and Lounge, and Jiffo’s Restaurant.
His uncertainty is shared by other restaurant and bar owners, like Markus Mueri, the proprietor of Deckers, Abacus, and Karoo.
“Not operating for two, three months comes with a lot of extra costs. Our freezers are full of food, our coolers, our wine rooms… we still have to pay utility bills and medical insurance for our employees, so it comes with a cost to close down,” said Mueri. “[The reopening] is a major step in the right direction for our economy coming back. It is a wonderful opportunity for us to shine and create confidence for our society. It is immensely, immensely important for Cayman.”
Mueri, who is part of the Independent Restaurant Coalition – an unofficial grouping of restaurants and stakeholders in the food-and-beverage industry set up in response to the coronavirus crisis – is one of several people who were instrumental in helping to develop new COVID-19 safety guidelines for restaurants, allowing them to reopen as restrictions are relaxed.
The coalition has been working with the Cayman Islands Tourism Association.
“We have come up with priorities, with training, with pre-opening tests, and floor-plan recommendations,” said Mueri. “The Cayman government has been very, very helpful, with everybody working together. We have created procedures to [go] by.”
Those procedures include a six-person-limit per table – and unless customers are from the same household, social-distancing guidelines apply. Tables must be at least eight feet apart. No person is to be seated at an indoor bar. Guests are encouraged not to leave their table to talk or mingle with other patrons, and when away from their table, they should wear a face mask. Only the outdoor areas of bars or restaurants will be open to customers for sit-down drinks or dinner.
The coronavirus has resulted in the collapse of the tourism industry, and subsequent spike in the number of unemployed, estimated to be more than 10,000 people. This harsh reality is something Mueri said restaurants will have to bear in mind, if they want to survive in a post-COVID-19 market.
“Everybody needs to scale it back a little bit, and everybody will make less money,” he said.
“We do need to control the costs, how much it costs to go out for dinner because people don’t have a whole lot of money in their pockets. It is a luxury, going out for dinner.”
Mueri said all restaurants should strive to make it to December – a sentiment echoed by John Ebanks Sr., a night manager of the Mango Tree Restaurant and Bar.
“It has hurt real bad financially, because we kept all 14 staff on payroll,” said Ebanks.
He said he hopes to reopen the bar in phases, with the first step being the reopening of its outdoor section.
“We are hoping [to be open] from Sunday morning, from 11 o’clock till 9 o’clock, to give people a chance to get home by 10[pm],” said Ebanks.
Until social-distancing guidelines are further relaxed, Robinson is urging patrons to understand that the post-COVID-19 bar service will not always mirror how it used to operate.
“These are different times now; we have to bear in mind now this COVID-19 is a serious thing, so let’s keep preaching and pushing for social distancing,” he said. “So you can’t hug and kiss the girls on the cheeks, we have to maintain social distancing; the longer we can do that, the longer we will be able to stay open.”
To see the list of rules regarding restaurants and bars, click here.
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