Taste Cheshire Challenge the Decision Makers #Blog

Briony Wilson
14th October 2020

Taste Cheshire CEO Stephen Wundke has been speaking on behalf of Cheshire hospitality businesses to decision makers, to discuss the best options for moving forward and get our area back in to tier 1 following the new restrictions.

Stephen was talking to Gavin on Dee 106.3 yesterday about the truly desperate situation facing the local hospitality industry. Here’s some of what he had to say.

The worst thing about going into Tier two is that it’s purgatory. If you’re in Tier 3 then you can make special claims because your business is closed and you can get government assistance. If you’re in Tier 2 then effectively what happens is, if you’re a restaurant or a pub you can’t have any mixed groups in, but over 60% of their business is households eating out to celebrate a birthday or a special event and that’s gone overnight.

They were already 25% down because of having to close at 10 O’clock, so throw another 60% in to the equation and there’s a lot of them who have spoken to us since the announcement which simply said they can’t afford to stay open.

There is no government assistance, so Tier 2 is the worst possible option. It allows the government to try and stop COVID, and that is important but if it carries on beyond Christmas then something in the region of 40% of businesses we know and love will never be seen again,

It’s an alarming figure and there’s no exaggeration to it.

Just quick figures, a venue takes £20,000 a week, then the profit on that for a venue is about £2k, if you take off all the costs and overheads which remain the same, they can only take £5,000, I’m sure you can work out that there isn’t anything left.

Generally speaking up until now the whole sector has accepted what’s happened and said we have to get on with things. They were innovative, they came up with ideas, the domes over at The Black Dog (Waverton), the take home meals at The Chester Fields, the takeaway cocktails at The Suburbs, all really good ideas. They were fighting, they were happy being open and employing people…thinking “better times ahead”, sadly that hasn’t happened.

Hospitality people have always been innovators, whatever is put in front of them…but I just don’t know how we’re gonna get people through this and get them open again.

Taste Cheshire had a big call with the Chief Executive and members of the council and we put forward some ideas.

The number one idea was how to get ourselves out of Tier 2 and back into Tier 1, and that’s going to take the effort of everybody. The problem is, that prior to us, 11 counties were in Tier 2 some 6 or 8 weeks ago and in all of those counties the numbers have got worse and not better.

The hospitality sector have put a lot of measures in place to make themselves Covid secure and then some, so it does seem like it has been unfairly chastised.

Hospitality is the sector that has been put under the bus by central government, because in reality if you look at the timing of the increases across the country it comes as no surprise it comes with the kids going back to school and University because during that, is where the cross infection happens. We know the children aren’t affected by it the way the rest of us are but they do carry it and spread it.

The decision was made they had to go back to university, for example in the University of Chester’s case you are talking about £160 million a year in fees that the students have to pay, and would not pay for just online lectures.

2.2 million university students flooding into Unis from across the country was bound to spread it, and who suffers, the hospitality trade.

A little bitter, yes we are.

In a normal year, many businesses, particularly hospitality rely on the run up to Christmas to pay for the dark months of January, February. That simply isn’t going to happen this year, unless of course we can find a way to get all of Cheshire West and Chester back into Tier one.

The point we are pressing is to use the council to do this. Mobilise a campaign to get every resident to understand what it is we need to do to try and stop this and get it back. Then  we can save the businesses that we love.

It’s not just hospitality, its also retail, we are all in this together, The council need to take a lead.

We are not going to get the help from central government, every other “louder voice” in every other area, like Liverpool, Manchester, Central London are going to be  pulling their focus. So we have to take control ourselves and do something about it.

The council are lobbying already for more powers over thing like track and trace and we think they will get that  because devolved responsibility is actually what central government wants. The sooner they do that the better, because the ones that can make a difference are the ones that are closer on the ground.

Let’s get creative and start working on that campaign now whatever we do can’t hurt.

The council have marketing and communications people and they can make use of resources such as Dee 106.3, the local papers, organisations such as Taste Cheshire and We love good times, with large social media followings can get the message out really quickly about what we have to do to take this into our own hands.

While we wait and work for government funding, lets all do what we are asked to do. Wear a mask in shops, let’s take some responsibility to stop the spread. We can do that, and we can head back to some form of normality.

Listen to the full interview here:-