Covid: A quiet New Year’s eve at restaurants as caution trumps celebration

It will be a quiet New Year’s Eve at restaurants and bars across country due to night curfews and bans on celebrations in various states.

Cafes and clubs have either cancelled or scaled down the events depending on local restrictions. Delhi and Uttar Pradesh have imposed a night curfew while Chennai has decided to ban all vehicular movement except emergency vehicles from Friday midnight to 5 am on Saturday.

In Mumbai, restaurants and bars are allowed to operate with 50 per cent capacity till midnight but there is a ban on celebrations on December 31. The municipal and police administrations too are stepping up vigil to ensure there are no violations of Covid-19 norms and restaurants and hotels in Mumbai have been asked to share CCTV footage of their premises with the local ward office.

“Business is going to be muted on December 31. There are booking cancellations. Even in normal times home deliveries are in demand on New Year’s Eve and it will be even higher today. Food delivery apps could face a challenge in fulfilling them,” said Pranav Rungta, Mumbai chapter head of National Restaurant Association of India.

A spokesperson of delivery app Swiggy said it had activated plans to fulfill the surge in orders on December 31.

Restaurant ordering platform Thrive has already started to see a spike in orders since the start of the month. “We support restaurants with deliveries of the order and we have beefed up our teams as we expect a spike in orders for New Year’s. We have already started to witness a spike in delivery orders by 20 per cent since the start of the month compared to November,” Dhruv Dewan, co-founder at Thrive said. Adding: “We expect the spike to be higher tomorrow as people may have house parties and order- in due to curbs on parties. We have already seen a higher spike in orders in Delhi after the Level 1 restrictions were put in place.”

“We have also put in place strong incentives and schemes for our delivery partners and are confident that along with us, they will be happy and committed to delivering a great experience to our customers. We have completed hyperlocal demand-supply planning and identified the specific slots which would see an increase in demand due to early ordering patterns,” the company said.

As Covid-19 is on rise most clubs in Kolkata have cancelled dance parties or gala celebrations. “It will be a normal day for clubs on Friday and there will be no bash,” said Tolly Club CEO Anil Mukerji.

Restaurants and pubs in Bengaluru are nervous of losing their best night of year — the New Year’s Eve when they make 50 per cent of the December revenue — due to fresh Covid restrictions in the city. According to state government and local administration guidelines, New Year celebrations would not be allowed anywhere in the city after 10 pm and restaurants, hotels, clubs, pubs to operate with 50 per cent seating capacity from 30 December to 2 January.

“The impact and loss is immeasurable as all are losing bookings and cancellations happening every minute as there is no clarity yet. Most people have left the city or booked outskirt resorts and farmhouses to stay,” said Amit Roy, a restaurateur in the city and partner at Shilton Hospitality.

In the neighbouring Tamil Nadu, the state government has urged people to avoid non-essential travel. With the advisories and curbs like ban on vehicle traffic in Chennai on New Year’s Eve, city residents are going to Puducherry which is allowing beach parties and celebrations at hotels, said Suresh Krishnamurthy, president of the Hindustan Chamber of Commerce.

“Around 25 per cent or nearly 500 of the hotels in the city are yet to restart operations after being shut during the pandemic. New Year’s Eve were supposed to be a big boost for our industry as a whole. But with parties going out of the menu, the business will be dull like what we have experienced in the last two years,” said Rajkumar Rajan, vice president, The Chennai Hotels Association.

(Aneesh Phadnis, Sharleen D’souza, Shine Jacob and Deepsekhar Choudhury contributed to this report)

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