Ontario must do more to support businesses during lockdown, says restaurant owner
Restaurants need grants, not loans, says Thunder Bay restaurateur Bianca Garofalo
Restaurateur Bianca Garofalo understands why Ontario has to move into lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19 — but she says the government needs to offer more support to struggling businesses.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced Monday that the entire province will move into lockdown on Boxing Day. That means all non-essential businesses will close or switch to curbside pickup, and restaurants will offer takeout only.
The province has been averaging more than 2,000 new cases a day in recent days, and recorded 2,123 on Monday alone. Provincial modelling projects that, without more restrictions, intensive care units will be overwhelmed by January.
The announcement doesn't change much for Toronto and other parts of southern Ontario that are already under lockdown. But for the north, it is reminiscent of those first days of the pandemic.
Garofalo is the owner of three restaurants in Thunder Bay, a city in northwestern Ontario. She's already transitioned two of them to takeout only. Here is part of her conversation with As It Happens guest host Helen Mann.
Ms. Garofalo, I know that you had an idea this was coming, but what is it like for you to hear the premier tell you you have to close down your business for two weeks?
Nothing really surprises us at this point in the year. It's unfortunate, because I really think that a lot of business people, restaurants especially, which were the hardest hit, were hopeful that the Christmas season would be some recovery time for us.
As we sort of started to work our way through the fall and the numbers were on the rise again, I think it became painfully obvious that we weren't going to have a normal Christmas season.
Now, you closed down two of your restaurants to only offer takeout earlier this month. How did you come to that decision?
At some point, you're listening to the advice that is being given by public health officials, by the premier, by the prime minister, and everybody was starting to have that message again about limiting the amount that you were going out and trying to only leave the house for essential business.
We evaluated it very closely, and we made a hard decision to flip to takeout only and close in-house dining because we thought that was the right thing to do.
So it sounds like you understand the premier's thinking when he says that this is a decision that will save lives, and particularly stop people from high-risk areas going to places like your town, which have remained open.
I understand the reasoning for it, and we're supportive of controlling the spread of the virus. It's just really difficult to operate within that reality for a very long period of time.
If we had gotten it under control the first time and we were back to normal, or at least somewhat normal operations, then you would be able to start building to recovery. But now we're set back again.
How much less money do you make doing takeout than you would if you had your traditional in-restaurant dining?
It's a pretty significant difference, to be honest. I mean, we do it because, obviously, it keeps the lights on and it pays some of the essential expenses that are going to accumulate whether you're operating or not.
So at least doing the takeout has brought in some cash flow for us to keep operating at a certain extent. But it's not comparable to the dine-in revenue. So it's not sustainable forever.
How long do you think you can keep going like this?
I don't know. It's hard to say. I mean, we've managed to hang in there. And, like, I think that I have three really strong business models in my community.
We've had the support of the community — people trying to support us with takeout, and we had a few really good months of patio traffic as well.
But the reality is that if the government doesn't announce more support for these businesses, January, February, March, which are usually the slowest months of the year, are going to be very difficult for people to keep going.
Have you had to lay off employees?
Yes, twice now.
How many people are we talking about?
The first time in March, we probably laid off about 95 to 98 per cent of the staff. And this time … because we had a larger takeout program established, we were able to keep a few more people. But we probably still laid off about 85 per cent of the staff.
How does that weigh on you?
It's really difficult. I mean, especially this last time that we made the decision to proactively close. It was right at the beginning of December, and you're very much aware that you're laying off the staff at Christmas in the winter. It's a vulnerable time of year for a lot of people. And they don't have a lot of job opportunities available.
I mean, everybody's in this situation. So all of the restaurants are operating mostly with reduced staff, so it's not like they're able to easily go find employment elsewhere.
So it's really hard because these people are your family. You see them every day. And a lot of them view coming to work as, you know, an outlet for them. And seeing their friends and their colleagues is like family.
You've said you'd like to see more support from the government for your industry going forward. What are you looking for?
What I've said from Day. 1 that I would have liked to have seen more grants. Initially, everybody was offered the loans and with fairly generous terms of repayment.
But the reality is that most people in the restaurant industry are operating at a very low profit margin. We already usually have a fairly substantial debt load. It's very costly to start a restaurant and to operate a restaurant as well.
And I just don't think that people are going to be able to keep adding to their debt load. So the $40,000 [federal] loans that were initially offered, I'm sure most people have worked their way through that.
Now they're offering another $20,000 dollars to add to the loan. I mean, at the end of the day, everyone is going to start asking themselves: Do I want to be $60,000 dollars more in debt? And that's just part of it.
And even some of the programs that they've rolled out, you know, a lot of them have been flawed.
All of those things are really detrimental to a business that is cash flow strapped and needs help immediately in order to keep, you know, paying the bills and keep the employees employed.
Written by Sheena Goodyear with files from CBC News. Interview produced by Sarah Jackson. Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
