Hong Kong’s evening dine-in ban extended – amid Covid-19 restrictions, fine-dining restaurants offer takeaways after 6pm with cook-along YouTube tutorials

Overseeing 22 restaurants in Hong Kong, ranging from Michelin-starred to casual dining, the co-founders of Black Sheep Restaurants, Syed Asim Hussain and Christopher Mark, have done inventive marketing, creating their own delivery service for their restaurants, Go, and the Supper Cult, a Monday-to-Friday meal plan delivered to your door.

“It is unpredictable at the moment but despite restaurants being closed at 6pm, my days are still long. We are all starting a bit earlier and from around 5:30pm, I switch to help on Go, our delivery platform. More often than not I get in the car and run deliveries until around 10pm,” says Hussain, whose restaurants include Belon, Ho Lee Fook and New Punjab Club. So if the boss is flexible, are the staff expected to be too?

“For us, we have always had a team culture where we feel it is essential [to be flexible]. No matter where in the company you work you have a good grasp of front-of-house operations, as this is where the guests are and the proverbial magic happens,” continues Hussain. “So even the office teams have had basic service training. We did need to do some refresher sessions, but on the whole the teams have been very flexible and happy to plug the gaps as they appear. Right now it is all hands on deck. For Go, they do everything from packing bags, delivering orders, answering the phones and tracking orders on the back-end.”

With lunch time being the main dine-in event around town right now, Mark says that has not been too different for them. “It has not been too much of an adjustment for us as, especially at the premium end, lunch has always been equally as important as dinner to us. We find lunches are often not social occasions but business, so guests can be a little less forgiving and harder to please.”