Coronavirus Hong Kong: starved of customers, restaurants close down as financial support from government ‘too little and too late’
- Vegetarian dining pioneer Bobsy Gaia is just one of the business owners forced to make the hard choice of shutting their establishments
- Parko Chan, who has been running trio of restaurants for seven years, says financial support from government did not come soon enough
When Bobsy Gaia decided to close his third restaurant in Hong Kong’s Central early in January, he was taken to court by his landlord for falling behind on his rent. By that point, the pioneer of vegetarian dining had given up hope on finding a way out of his troubles.
“I would have stubbornly continued to serve the community, even though we were losing money at an alarming rate,” he said.
“I need some time to recover from the damage,” said Gaia, who has spent more than two decades in the city.
Hong Kong ordered bars to shut in early January and banned dine-in meals after 6pm as part of curbs to stem a surge of infections. Eateries were further restricted to seating only two people at a table on February 24.
Simon Wong Ka-wo, president of the Federation of Restaurants and Related Trades, estimated that more than 5,000 of the city’s 17,000 restaurants had closed since the pandemic began.
“It is all doom and gloom for the city’s food and beverage industry. They don’t have customers,” he said.
Wong noted business declined by 90 per cent last month in the aftermath of the ban on evening meals inside restaurants. He predicted more restaurants would shut in May, although the number depended on how the pandemic progressed and the level of government support eateries received from the sixth round of the Anti-epidemic Fund, worth about HK$26 billion (US$3.33 billion).
Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po predicted in a blog post last month that the economy would end up contracting in the first quarter of the year, reversing a recovery that began in the second half of 2021.
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Parko Chan, who has been running a trio of restaurants for seven years in the city, said the financial support from the government was “too little and too late”.
“The struggling catering industry can live longer if the government can continue to hand out the relief fund until the pandemic ends,” he said, adding the financial support barely covered his rent.
After shutting down two other restaurants and laying off 20 employees earlier this year, Chan planned to close his Samurai Ramen in Tsim Sha Tsui in July.
“The pandemic gave us a big blow as residents have weaker consumption sentiment than before,” he said.
Chan is not alone. Although the evening dine-in ban is expected to be lifted on April 21, some restaurant owners decided to shut their business anyway, pointing to the city’s uncertain economic outlook.
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“We are suffering with no clear end in sight from forced closures and curfews,” said the owner of Wong Kee Restaurant in Wan Chai, who did not want to be identified.
She decided to shut the well-known restaurant that had been running for nearly 30 years on April 25, leaving her with a HK$1 million loss.
Kelvin Lau, a 23-year-old student who was a regular restaurant customer, said the city would be reduced to a “food desert” if the restrictions on the industry continued.
“The small local restaurants are not dying from the virus, but from the tough restrictions,” he said.
