As a co-founder of the Dinner's chain Alexander Borschevich told, public catering operators felt a negative impact of corona-crisis most of all. Facilities with the lunch set menus focused on office staff have squatted particularly hard.
Now, Dinner's restaurants work 10%–30% of their pre-crisis levels. Most of them are located in such large business centers as Leonardo, Ilyinsky, Astarta, Eleven, and Kyivstar, 1+1, and UkrSubbank’s offices. Many of their renters continue to work remotely, and those returning to their offices try to avoid restaurants, having home-packed lunches, or ordering meal delivery.
As a result of falling traffic and sales, Dinner's had to reduce its workforce by a third (from over 600 to 200) and shift the work to free delivery and sale of 40 types of frozen food.
In the view of Alexander Borschevich, pre-quarantine levels might be achieved only in spring 2021, but only if the coronavirus’ second wave is avoided.
In the past four months, Dinner's has been operating at a total loss like many other restaurateurs. Moreover, the restaurant in Kirpa Street is going to be reformatted or sold, and expansion of the business is out of the question. Note that the company was in the final stage of opening three more locations for restaurants, spread over 2,700 square meters, as early as March. The company doesn’t hide that survival is the key challenge in such circumstances.
