Some thrive, some don’t: Restaurants serve post-lockdown stories

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected how restaurants conduct their businesses and how much they rake in per day, compared to the pre-lockdown period. Daily Trust Saturday takes a look.

Before the coronavirus pandemic that rocked the world, every business, as usual, had challenges that owners tried to overcome. But with COVID-19, many had to shut down or devise new ways that would enable them stay afloat. One of such is the restaurant business.

In Wuye, Abuja, Matosh Kitchen is known for its local Nigerian dishes, particularly amala. Customers, especially the working class, drive or walk down there during weekdays, their cars filling the wide parking space before the restaurant’s tent-like structure. Inside, the place is a big hall with plastic tables and chairs and long queues of customers. But this was all before COVID-19 spoilt the party.

Now, post-lockdown, business isn’t as usual for Matosh Kitchen. Although the queues are still there (not exactly as before, though), the chairs are no longer there, a sad reminder that things have changed. But aside these indicators, business still moves, albeit with some changes.

One major change is that customers now troop into the restaurant to buy, take-away style. No-one sits in the Kitchen anymore, and cars zoom out of the expansive premises as they come in. However, the paying point remains busy and business appears to be going on smoothly.

The case is different with Mrs Grace Ettah’s Grit Calabar Kitchen in Kuje, also in Abuja. Although a much smaller restaurant, there were no queues. Mrs Ettah said the business had started slow in 2020, and when it was just about to pick up, the pandemic took that hope away. Due to the location of her restaurant, she was able to leave it open during lockdown. “In a day we got about twenty customers then,” she said.

Mrs Ettah’s business runs on a simple arrangement. She cooks daily, and unlike other small restaurants around her, refuses to sell leftovers no matter the situation. She explained: “Most of my workers don’t have families, and eat from the restaurant. So when we don’t cook and sell, how do they feed?”

But immediately after lockdown, things changed. Now she gets fifty or more customers in a day as against the over hundred customers pre-lockdown. “At the end of the month when salaries are paid, we sometimes get up to eighty customers,” Mrs Ettah said.

It’s easy to see how Mrs Ettah still manages to rise above the present challenge. Her restaurant is located close to Kuje Council’s main market and offers food to the public at what may be considered an affordable price.  A plate of food is usually not more than three or four hundred naira, except for foods like Fisherman Soup, which goes for eight thousand naira.

Unlike Matosh Kitchen where all customers have to take away their food, those at Grit Calabar Kitchen have their options still open. They can sit and eat at the restaurant, which now creates more space between tables, or take way. Mrs Ettah added that most people, however, prefer to take away.  Nevertheless, as far as she is concerned, to an extent, her business manages to survive and still makes some profit.

In Kaduna, Kafuwai Dauda Ja’afaru runs a boutique where he sells mostly shoes for females, aside other businesses. The ban on international flights made that side of the business difficult and because he is unable to travel and some of his goods are still being held up in Lagos, he became more creative.

Fortunately for Ja’afaru, before the pandemic he veered into a new terrain which involved courier of goods within the city. Little did he know the courier service, called Yaro Boy, would be his saving grace during and after lockdown when people in his shoes lost their sources of income.

“Basically, using motorcycles, we run errands on behalf of people. We do pick-ups and deliveries, particularly groceries and food. During lockdown, we were regarded as providers of essential services, so we were not harassed by security personnel while making deliveries. Instead of people going out, they preferred to use us,” Dauda said.

Post-lockdown, Ja’afaru’s customers realised they could go on making transactions as usual, on or offline. “We even serve as middlemen. For example, when people don’t want to pay for goods until they get a product, we serve as go-betweens. So, they don’t need to go out,” he added.

During lockdown, Ja’afaru’s wife, Mercy Shekari Ja’afaru, launched her masa food business, and together they marketed on social media. Presently, it thrives based on the popularity it gained during lockdown online as the couple make a habit of posting attractive pictures showing a small group of customers enjoying bowls of the pancake-like delicacy.

“To some extent, we are now making more money. Now we have more motorcycles running our errands and more investors are interested in putting money in our business,” Ja’afaru said.

In Abuja, Nkataa, an online grocery store and restaurant which later flagged-off its walk-in restaurant enjoyed what its Managing Director, Ikenna Nwaeze, called “good online patronage.” He explained that during weekdays, they had a lot of people coming around for lunch. But now the restaurant, in the ever-growing Utako district, which boasts of an atmosphere suitable for relaxation while eating, is empty. A typical afternoon there means empty booths and tables, except for staff who sit around or the presence of one or two customers who could easily be visitors waiting for a friend.

So Nkataa now relies on its online platform, where it first launched out and made its mark.  Here, orders are high, Nwaeze said. Even above what used to be. “This was the case during lockdown because people went online, and since we are already known as an online platform, it was easy,” he said.

Sunday Patrick is a manager in a restaurant tucked into a busy street in Wuse II usually jam-packed with customers. On a typical day before the coronavirus pandemic, finding an empty chair or table in the restaurant could be challenging. But this is not the case today. Like many others, it too has suffered from the pandemic’s impact.

“We used to get not less than two hundred customers in a day. Now if we are lucky, we get half that number. The place was usually crowded, but now people come for take-away orders, and patronage has dropped drastically,” Patrick said. He also pointed out that people are afraid, and so the restaurant observes social distancing with two chairs per table. “But even with customers’ numbers cut by half, we still make profit,” he sighed, as he went over to a masked customer who just walked in.