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Falconer, however, suspects people will be cancelling reservations en masse “and you’re going to see people going to house parties,” instead of restaurants where owners have invested in Plexiglas barriers and operate under WorkSafe-mandated COVID-19 safety plans.
Ian Tostenson, CEO of the B.C. Restaurant and Food Service Association, said his organization received the order “about a minute” before Henry’s media conference, which left him “profoundly disappointed.”
Restaurants have likely spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” on special menus, champagne and other mementoes, and “we’ll probably see restaurants lose, you know, 25 to 50 per cent of (their) potential sales.”
The 8 p.m. timing of last call makes second seatings more difficult to accommodate, Tostenson said, but if Henry had consulted with the industry ahead of time, they could have reached a middle ground of perhaps 9 p.m.
Tostenson was already expecting a “very, very understated (and) low-key” New Year’s Eve, without any scheduled parties or celebrations due to Henry’s last order Nov. 8 that restricted social interactions to people’s own households.
Sales in the sector plummeted after that order, Tostenson said, but establishments are holding out hope for an increase in takeout business for the evening.
The order will put an additional crimp in business for Seasons in the Park, which has a three-course New Year’s dinner planned and has taken reservations from couples mostly, but some family households as well.
“It won’t be celebratory in any way, shape or form,” said Seasons in the Park general manager Richard Baker of the New Year’s Eve dinner planned at his restaurant in picturesque Queen Elizabeth Park.
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