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Open All Hours!

Open All Hours!

Monday 10 January 2011

Open All Hours?

Well we all know the old joke “when the going gets tough the Irish go on holidays.” So it struck me was the case over the Christmas/New Year period. We have had a couple of years of restaurants telling us how much they have been suffering with the downturn in business. Mind you I have to say that anywhere I go that does a decent job by way of well priced decent food always seem to be constantly packed.

The latest panic for them has been the water shortages and that understandably is a major disruptive problem from not only the point of preparing and cooking the food but from the loo facilities and hygiene. So many businesses could be destroyed by lack of water - restaurants, coffee shops, hairdressers, the list is endless, and if it is not sorted rapidly it will affect tourism this year, because who wants to book a holiday to a destination with water difficulties! On top of recession and water shortages this year, there was the heavy snow which wiped out so many restaurant nights and Christmas parties. With all of these horrendous happenings taking from business, you would think, wouldn’t you, that like the Ronnie Barker TV programme ‘Open All Hours’ set in the corner shop, that restaurants would all be open when there was any chance of a few bob to be made. Not so, after all this is Ireland, and we are only in the worst recession in memory, lets close up immediately after Christmas and have a little holiday. We couldn’t possibly take that break when business is dead as a doe doe in January and February!

New Year’s Day, skipping breakfast, we headed off into town to our favourite store and straight up to the restaurant for the Eggs Benedict to find that there was “no breakfast on the Bank Holidays”! Do people not eat on Bank holidays? Perhaps it accounted for the fact that the restaurant only had a scattering of people whereas very often there is a queue. Okay, we thought, we will go and have lunch after our shopping for surely New Years Day must be a great day for family lunches and outings. Having done our shopping it was now lunchtime and we got into the car and headed off with the phone to find that there were in fact very few restaurants open which was absolutely crazy on the Saturday of a Bank Holiday weekend.

On the Bank Holiday Sunday it was the same story, many restaurants who normally open for Sunday lunch were closed, total madness. Those who were open, including FXB’s in Monkstown, had lots of big family groups spanning different generations, plus groups of women gathering together for the last holiday hurrah as it were. Well done FXB’s it was a tour de force in p.r. I’d say they have gained a whole new clientele who were delighted with the buzz and the food there on that Sunday. It is extraordinary, particularly in these times, that restaurants were not making hay whilst the sun shone – never mind irritating their regular Sunday lunchers. I know, we all want to have time off, but when you are in a service industry you have to realize that this is what it is supposed to be, a service to your customer. They will have enough time over the next couple of months to contemplate their navels. The only people who seem to realize this are the ethnic restaurants who know that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush!

As to the Banks. Don’t start me. We all know the state they are in, to our cost. Christmas was on a Saturday, in case you had forgotten, but when did the Banks open again for business – the following Thursday. Are we all mad or something? You have all of these businesses out there with Christmas cash who cannot lodge it for the best part of a week. On top of this, I rang on the Friday to Bank of Ireland to order a laser card to be told that, not only would it cost me €5.90, but the order wouldn’t be processed until the following Wednesday because the following Monday was the New Year Bank Holiday!

When I started out many years ago working in the service industry in a Hotel and Tourism organization, we worked 19 days on the trot, with every third weekend off.

Now that was a service industry! People in hotels in fairness are used to, and accept, that it is a seven day a week job, but restaurants need to learn this fact also. A service industry demands service. The immediate couple of week or so after Christmas are days when people will spend money – they have been holding on for the sales and to see what is out there. The mammy has had the cash pressies from the sons or hubbies and it is burning a hole in their pockets. They want to be able to go out and spend it and eat out at the same time.

People really need to cop on in this country – if we have to dig ourselves out of a hole – the tills need to be kept ringing and ‘Open All Hours’.