Night curfew in Delhi from today, industry shows disbelief as restaurants to close by 10 PM

Arvind Kejriwal-led government has announced night curfew in Delhi from today till April 30 to curb the worsening coronavirus disease (Covid-19) crisis in the national capital.

With this curfew gatherings at markets, restaurants, pubs, bars, nightclubs, party venues and other public places would have to close by 10pm every night, shared officials.

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The pandemic has affected the restaurant and food business at large. The past one year has been a very difficult for everyone in the sector with new guidelines and protocols changing every other day.  With new restrictions in place, restaurateurs in Delhi believed that this would be the worst for the industry as they have just started to come back on track.

They also added that this will have a huge impact on sales and survival of the industry as a whole.

“It is worse for the industry and we were just trying to recover from the last years blow and this has happened again. There is so much panic in the staff as so many livelihoods depends on this decision. I think the government should try the curfew only for a week and see if it’s a actually helping the cause,” shared Akshay Anand co-founder Ophelia and Toy Room who was already running his restaurants at 50% occupancy and following the government sops and making sure their restaurants are a safe place to dine.

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Adding to the same, Japtej Ahluwalia, cofounder, Savya Rasa pointed, “It is a big setback for an industry which was only starting to show signs of recovery. We as an industry are very susceptible to perceptions and sentiment. With covid turning the sentiment negative, it’s going to have devastating impact in the short run and will result in job losses and closures.”