KOLKATA: Several popular restaurants in Kolkata had full or near-full occupancy on the first day of opening for eight hours after the one-and-half-month closure due to restrictions imposed by the state government to check the spread of coronavirus, owners said on Thursday.
They said that the response is "absolutely amazing" as there are still curbs on the movement of people, no public transport is available and the weather was not conducive to eating out.
As the Covid situation improved, the state administration allowed restaurants to operate with 50 per cent seating capacity and vaccinated staff from noon to 8 pm from Wednesday.
"The footfall was 50-70 per cent across all the popular eating joints on the first day and even today despite rain and waterlogging. It augurs well for the pandemic-hit food and beverages industry," a spokesperson of the Hotels and Restaurants Association of Eastern India said.All members of the Association are following Covid-19 protocols of the state government rigorously, the spokesperson said.
"The response was absolutely amazing. We had a full house from lunch onwards till closing, off course with 50 per cent occupancy for social distancing," Nitin Kothari, the owner of Mocambo, told PTI.
Debaditya Chaudhury, a director of restaurants Chowman, Oudh 1590 and Chapter 2, said, "We were not expecting such a big figure. The main Chowman and Oudh 1590 outlets in the city fetched a total of 400 customers. On Jamai Sasthi, people prefer to have home-cooked food. So, it was pretty much a success."