Pubs and Restaurant's reflect on a chaotic two-years

By Nicholas Durrant

The Grosvenor Arms in Earlsfield.

As a tumultuous two-years come to an end, south west London's pubs and restaurants are still filling with eager customers despite a high number of daily covid cases and a new variant of Covid-19.

In pubs and restaurants in Tooting, Earlsfield, Battersea, Stockwell and Brixton, bar staff and owners spoke to the SWLondoner about a difficult two years that shook the UK's hospitality industry to its core.

Lockdown

For the landlady of Churchill's pub in Battersea Siobhan Walton, March 2020 was a frightening period.

She had only been running the pub for around year, building up the business, when all she had worked for was in put jeopardy by the nationwide lockdown implemented on the 26th March.

However, while she was worried about the future of her pub, she was especially concerned about the health of the regulars at Churchill's, many of whom were elderly.

Walton, 54, said: "When we closed I thought to myself, how many of people am I going to see again? I felt really sad."

Walton's fears nearly came true. As the first Covid-19 wave surged across the UK one of her frequent customers, a bus driver, caught the virus and was hospitalised. For a period Walton, and the community who regularly go to Churchill's, thought he would not make it.

Thankfully, the bus driver survived and Walton said he is now doing well.

The Churchill's pub in Battersea

The Churchill's pub in Battersea

While Walton worried about her friend's health, Polish barman Matt Smith was losing his job.

Smith wasn't alone, in the first 10 months of the pandemic roughly a fifth hospitality workers lost their jobs with Londoners particularly badly affected by the rise in unemployment. For Smith, 30, he lost not only his job but also his support network, many of whom were migrants and left the UK.

Smith said: "Pretty much all of my friends worked in hospitality and all of them left.

"You're not sure what’s going to happen and your just here as an immigrant and you live alone and you end up in a situation where you don’t have a job and it's hard."

Matt Smith standing next to the bar he now works at called Dirty Habits in Broadway Market Tooting.

Matt Smith standing next to the bar he now works at called Dirty Habits in Broadway Market Tooting.

Nicolà Sgarago, 25, from Milan also lost his bar job in the pandemic. He said that despite furlough his venue still fired many of the staff. Four of Sgarago's close friends from Italy were also laid off from hospitality jobs in the UK's first lockdown.

However, Sgarago will not have to worry about getting fired again any time soon.

Together, along his four other friends who lost their jobs in the pandemic, they put their savings into setting up their own bar called 'The Lab' in Tooting Broadway which Sgarago now manages himself.

The Nervous Re-Opening

Between March 2020 and July 2021 the UK went through three nationwide lockdowns. In-between lockdowns pubs and restaurants had to cope with an array of restrictions.

The restrictions were varied, ranging from 10pm curfews, mandated meals with a beverage and limits on multiple households mixing in venues.

By the time restrictions on hospitality came to an end on the 19th of July, 129,089 people had died 28 days after testing positive for Covid-19. As of December 2021, Covid-19 is listed as a cause of death on over 20,000 Londoners death certificates.

Understandably, when restrictions were lifted many people did not want to go back to pubs and restaurants.

According to polling site YouGov, 39% of people in the UK are still avoiding crowded public places. This is down from 59% in April 2021 when hospitality venues partially re-opened.

Sitting in The Grosvenor Arms in Earlsfield pub landlord Simon Guthrie, who took over the pub in May 2021, said: "It's been a gradual process of people coming out of their homes again.

"I have experienced people gingerly coming back, it's very understandable".

Convincing people it safe to return to their venues without putting off other customers who want a complete return to normality is a difficult conundrum for venue managers and owners.

Encouraging social distancing, sanitising surfaces, leaving doors and windows open and table service have been implemented in many establishments.

Walton at Churchill's pub has removed the chairs around the bar to encourage social distancing both for her customers safety and because of her own unease about being so close to customers. She said that the bar had formally been the hub of the pub.

Walton had to get hands on to ensure the safety of her patrons after someone who visited the pub tested positive.

Reacting to the bad news, Walton went out and got lateral flow tests. The Irishwomen said she new that some of the older regular customers may be uncomfortable or unsure of how to test themselves so she tested them herself.

One of the people who she checked tested positive and self isolated stopping the COvid-19 outbreak spreading further in the pub.

Most venues told the SWLondoner that some former regulars had never returned to their venues over fears of the catching the virus.

The pandemic also saw a huge population churn in London with people moving to other parts of the country or abroad.

Places such as Casa Mafongo, a Dominican restaurant in Loughborough Junction, which owner Enyer De Los Santos said was very popular with local Dominican, Colombian, Spanish and Italian people, saw lots of regular customers leave the UK.

Fear of Covid-19 and loyal customers upping and leaving meant that despite restrictions ending many venues in south west London faced an uncertain future in the summer of 2021.

The owner of the Eritrean restaurant Damera stands behind the bar in Brixton.

The Falcon pub near Clapham Junction Station.

Shift Supervisor Irina Kilmamova and her team at the Falcon pub.

In pubs and restaurants in Earlsfield, Stockwell and Brixton bar staff and owners spoke about a difficult two years and about how their venues are doing now.

Back to life

However, despite these challenges, most landlords and bar-staff who spoke to the SWLondoner said they were similarly or more busy than before the pandemic, especially on weekends.

Only one of the eight venues that spoke to SWLondoner said the amount of customers they are receiving now is significantly lower than in 2019.

In The Queen's Head on Stockwell Road assistant manager Laura Martin, 35, was gearing up for a fully booked Tuesday night pub quiz.

Martin has worked at the pub for four and a half years and said that prior to the pandemic the pub had been struggling.

Now on both week nights and weekends the pub is busy and the quiz night is fully booked a least a week in advance.

Martin said: "Since lock-down it's made people appreciate us more like we are a family to come back and speak too.

We're like little agony aunt's here you know. We sit and listen to everyone's problems and make sure everybody has a good time."

The busyness of hospitality venues is perhaps surprising considering daily Covid-19 cases have been high in the UK since June, with the 7-day average for new infections always being above 25,000 and at times rising above 40,000.

Daily Covid-19 deaths have not been as high as in 2020 and early 2021 but for most weeks in the second half of 2021 average daily Covid-19 deaths have been over 130.

However, high Covid-19 case numbers are not putting off most customers, both young and old, according to the pub and restaurant owners who spoke to the SWLondoner.

Indeed, most staff and owners said that even the Omnicron variant is not currently impacting the amount of customers they are getting.

However, for people who lost their jobs and livelihoods the alarm around the new Covid-19 variant Omnicron will bring back painful memories.

In Broadway Market Tooting barman Smith grimaced when the variant was mentioned.

However, both Sgarago and Smith in Tooting thought that only the government, not the variant, could stop people coming out to party in their bars.

Sgarago said: "I’m not super worried about the new variant.

"I think Londoners had enough off that and I think they will keep going out anyway unless the government forces us to shut".

Nick Sgarago in his cocktail bar The Lab in Broadway Market Tooting.

Casa Mafongo, a Dominican and Spanish restaurant and bar in Brixton.