‘Reopening Our Restaurant Needed Courage & Caution’

Saurabh Jalan (36), a restaurateur in Kolkata, used the lockdown period to set new safety and hygiene standards in place. When Unlock 1.0 came, Jalan was ready to reboot

I own three restaurants in Kolkata and have been in this business for last five years. The business was running smoothly till Coronavirus pandemic struck. People in Kolkata love adda (loosely, a hangout buzzing with debates and discussion), and long social meetings are an inherent part of the city’s culture. Coronavirus and the ensuing lockdown brought an abrupt end to this.

The hospitality sector has been the worst hit and we didn’t know what the future would hold for all of us. The first lockdown had been announced so suddenly that many of our employees were not able to go back to their home towns in other states, especially our housekeeping staff and chefs etc. on duty that night. The first thing we did was to tell them not to panic and keep their morale high. We provided them shelter in the restaurant itself and took care of their needs to make them feel they were not alone in this crisis.

Realising that the pandemic will change the way we would socialise in future, we trained our staff to set new hygiene and sanitation standards in place.

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I then sat with my partners to draw a plan to provide food to the needy. It had twin purpose: we served our society and also kept our employees engaged in work. Every day, we sent out around 1,000-1,500 food packets. We thus we got better equipped against Covid-19. When the Unlock 1.0 was announced, we were cautious but ready to be back in business.

Our patrons’ safety was paramount. So we kept only one of the three restaurants fully functional while other two were turned into take-away or home delivery setups. The dining in facility was kept limited to our veg multi-cuisine restaurant called Fly Kouzina (Kolkata’s first airline-themed restaurant in Salt Lake area).

I would be lying if I said we are not scared. But we have a solid team which brainstorms every morning about how to make things safer, more hygienic and yet enjoyable for both customers and employees.

There are paper envelopes for guests to keep their masks while they are eating. We share the menu via WhatsApp so there is minimum need to touch anything except the food we eat. If customers want to order food from their cars parked outside, we make sure we provide them with as good a service as we do inside the restaurant.

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The surfaces are regularly sanitized. Excessive care is taken in keeping the washrooms sanitized after every single use. We also take out the time to address each and every query the guests might have related to our preparation against Covid-19.

Based on our experience on Fly Kouzina, we hope to open our other two restaurants pretty soon. Both the public as well as restaurant owners are showing courage with caution. Each day brings with itself new challenges and newer solutions to keep the fight against Covid-19 going.

We have only about 30-40 people coming in to our restaurant every day but we hope things will begin to pick up slowly. Flying is still very risky but people can get a little feel of travel at our airline-themed restaurant.