Some eateries experiment with reopening for dine-in business

CORONAVIRUS | With the start of the conditional movement control order (MCO) today, several eateries in the Solaris Mont Kiara area have decided to try re-opening for dine-in customers.

A few of them told Malaysiakini they had to do so because their business was suffering under the MCO.

“The rental here is very high,” said the person who runs the Solaris Cafe who only wished to be known as Winnie (above).

However, she noted, the dine-in business has been “quite slow” so far, as of 11am.

Usually, their customers consist of office workers whose offices are in the area, she said.

“Maybe a lot of offices are not opened yet,” Winnie said.

Despite the slow business, she said they will continue to open for dine-in customers as they need to pay their high rental.

Similarly, Lee Beom Kyoo (photo) who runs the Sukdduck Solaris restaurant, said his business had gone down by at least half during the MCO.

“Now that the government is allowing us to open for dine-in, we decided to do so,” he told Malaysiakini today.

In order to stick to the standard operating procedures (SOPs) provided by the government, these restaurants are also limiting their customers to about two to three people per table.

Lee said he has also prepared several bottles of hand sanitisers for anyone who enters the restaurant.

He will also record the temperature, name and phone numbers of all his customers.

Both Lee and Winnie hope dine-in business will pick up during the lunch hour.

However, most of the eateries in this area have decided to stick to takeaways and online orders only.

Frances Boon (photo), the owner of Little Collins Bakery & Cafe, said they have decided to stick to takeaways and online orders because they are not ready to reopen for dine-in business yet, among other reasons.

Besides, she said, during the MCO, their online orders had spiked up very high, to the point that they have basically had to convert the shop into a storeroom to cater to the online orders.

She also said the SOPs provided by the government is not very clear and their own staff are not comfortable re-opening for dine-in customers yet.

“There were also a lot of posts on Instagram and a lot of our customers say they are not ready to come out.

“There is also an F&B (food and beverages) crisis group (on Telegram) with about 700 people and they also did their own surveys and quite a lot also decided not to do dine-in yet,” she said.

Boon said, for now, Little Collins will wait for a week for the government to settle the SOPs first before deciding to reopen for dine-in business.

The conditional MCO, which starts today, allows most economic sectors to reopen for business, albeit with restrictions and conditions.

The conditional MCO was announced by Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin last Friday. - Mkini