The losses of the restaurant business in St. Petersburg during the lockdown introduced by the city authorities due to the worsening epidemiological situation ranged from 30% to 100% of revenue. At the same time, the support measures proposed by Smolny were insufficient to compensate for the losses.
Lockdown in the Northern Capital was announced for a period of non-working days from October 30 to November 7. During the nine days of the actual suspension of activity, the St. Petersburg catering establishments, whose work, with the exception of customer take-out and delivery services, was prohibited, suffered serious financial losses. According to market participants, bars were the most affected by the tight restrictions.
Managing partner of the restaurant “8956 Oblomoff” Vladimir Shershnev noted that drinking establishments lost about 90-100% of revenue, restaurants - 60-80%, street food - about 50%. At the same time, sales of large chain fast food establishments decreased minimally.
The general director of the Barslon Family bar network, Alexander Tyrichev, estimated the revenue losses of his establishments at 80%. At the same time, according to him, bars and restaurants were partially able to compensate for the losses due to delivery and take-away work, but the profit from the provision of this type of service was mainly received by establishments specializing in sushi and pizza, and in organizations of other formats, a significant increase in orders for delivery has not been observed.
“I did not notice an increase, although it was supposed to be. There were only kopecks from delivery,” Tyrichev stressed.
The marketing director of the restaurant group Committee Irina Konyakhina said that the chain's establishments earned practically nothing last week, and delivery during the lockdown brought only 5% of the average revenue.
“This is in no way comparable to what we could earn this week,” said Konyakhina.
On average, losses in catering in St. Petersburg amounted to about 35-40% of revenues. Such data was given by the president of Federation of Restaurateurs and Hoteliers of the North-West Federal District Leonid Garbara.
Market participants also stressed that the existing support measures were not enough in this situation. Owners of catering establishments applied for grants in the form of one minimum wage per employee, but this would not help to compensate for the costs incurred, because in fact in different organizations from 10 to 50% of the staff worked at lockdown, while the rest continued to receive wages at home.
Earlier representatives of business and the expert community repeatedly appealed to the city authorities to change their decision on the introduction of the lockdown, and warned of the negative consequences and irreparable losses for the economy of the city. Analysts pointed out that the support measures offered by Smolny would be incommensurable with the coming financial losses. According to economic commentator Dmitri Prokofiev, the business sector will pay for all the damage.
“In this situation, we will have to pay, because, naturally, although promises to help have been declared, the help is incomparable with the losses incurred by [business representatives],” Prokofiev predicted on the Echo of Petersburg radio station.
Recall that on Monday, November 8, St. Petersburg organizations were able to resume their activities after the lockdown, but faced new restrictions. According to the press-service of Smolny, starting from this week catering establishments, circuses, concert halls, cinemas, and also the organizations of performing arts, water parks, zoos, oceanariums and skating rinks can work only till 11 p.m. Considering the colossal losses caused by 9 non-working days, the new restrictions may become another obstacle to the restoration of St. Petersburg's business and the city's economy as a whole.