One of South Africa’s most popular franchise restaurants Spur has announced it will not reopen immediately after lockdown. All Spur and Panarottis restaurants will stay closed, while only select Rocomamas eateries will reopen.
The Spur group’s Chief Operating Officer Mark Farelly said, they will remain closed as long as there are restrictions on the number of customers they are allowed to serve at any given time and when they can sell alcohol.
“The restricted trade was so injurious that the lockdown almost came as a relief as the cost of individual closures was preferable to the hideous trading losses our franchisees were incurring,” Farrelly said in a statement. “On average, our turnovers dropped over 70%, and it proved impossible to run a viable business with the restrictions in place.”
He added that Spur is not going to have its franchisees take on the cost of reopening after lockdown on so they can “sustain catastrophic losses”.
Spur has been careful not to inform its customers on when it will be reopened; instead, customers have just been informed that they will be kept updated on when the reopening will take place.
It is believed Farelly also did not inform landlords of when the eateries in the group will begin trading again. Instead, they have been warned that winter may not be the safest time for sit-down restaurants.
“One of our major concerns is that we are going into winter [the flu season] and rightfully, people will continue to be alarmed by anyone coughing and sneezing,” he said. “We will not grant a franchise on any site driven to closure by unrealistic landlord expectation.”
There are more than 600 Spur restaurants across the country, which employ approximately 30 000 employees.
Picture: Spur Steak Ranches