It's been a week now since restaurants in the Montreal region reopened their dining room. How did they experience this deconfinement? What was the response from customers? Here is a little account of what has happened over the past seven days in the field of catering in the greater Montreal region ...
The relief was palpable among the majority of owners, employees and customers after 14 weeks of forced closure.
But during the very first day of deconfinement and reopening of the dining rooms, last June 22, very few customers showed up in the restaurants. And that’s exactly what restorers expected.
The latter knew that ridership would not be monster when it reopened, mainly due to the heat wave and the St-Jean feast that followed a few days later.
It was at this point, last Wednesday, that business resumed a little more normally for restaurateurs and their kitchen and service employees. The more the week went on, the more reservations there were for the weekend days.
Also, according to a CROP survey offered exclusively to La Presse, more than one in three Quebecers say that it is very or fairly likely that they will return to the dining room of their favorite restaurant very soon.
CLOSURES
However, it is also in recent days that bad news has been confirmed: several establishments have indeed announced their permanent closure. The main reason of course remains the long confinement and the forced break. This is the case among others for about fifteen tables.
ELSEWHERE IN QUEBEC
Looking elsewhere in Quebec, where the reopening of the dining rooms was possible a week earlier, the news is encouraging in the majority of cases.
Some even claim to have received as many visitors as at the same time last year or to have broken sales records compared to 12 months ago, the weather helping greatly here.
