It's a chance for the industry to survive, they stress.
Ukrainian restaurant owners have appealed to authorities to allow opening up summer areas during the quarantine period.
An acclaimed Odesa-based restaurateur Savva Libkin and co-owner of the Tarantino Family network Dmytro Fedotenkov have posted the relevant appeals on social networks.
According to Libkin, some 840,000 people are employed in the Ukrainian restaurant business. It's 1.5 million, including related areas.
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Letting restaurants survive and preserving jobs is possible if authorities permit reopening summer terraces. Moreover, patrons will be safe if appropriate measures are taken to prevent coronavirus spread:
- limiting the number of guests so that the distance between the tables is no less than 1.5 meters;
- mandating reservations in order to strictly limit the number of patrons;
- putting disinfectors at the entrances;
- ensuring that waiters wear face masks and gloves, changing them every 30 minutes;
- complying with all sanitary standards;
- disinfecting kitchens with special lamps;
- providing PEE for cooks;
- checking temperature of patrons and staff; and
- introducing fines for violations.
"If all rules are observed, visiting a restaurant's summer terrace will be much safer than going to the supermarket, where dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of people crowd around stocks of household appliances and mobile phones or around ready-to-eat product shelves in ordinary grocery stores," said Libkin.
"I'm one of the Ukrainian restaurateurs and I ask the authorities to consider this opportunity and give business a chance to survive," he added.
Co-owner of the Tarantino Family network, Dmytro Fedotenkov, is expecting the same step from the government. "My colleagues, restaurateurs, who provided thousands of jobs, wrote a public appeal to the Cabinet of Ministers [on the opening of summer restaurant terraces]," he noted on his Facebook page.
"In large cities there are systemic restaurants with large and spacious summer areas that are in demand among people when the weather is warm. A controlled territory where the administration is able to organize and ensure compliance with all restrictive standards – masks, entry control, disinfection, distance of 1.5 - 2 meters between tables, strict sanitation rules inside the facility, and fines for violations. We emphasize – we're only talking only about open summer areas," Fedotenkov wrote.
As UNIAN reported earlier, on April 22, the Cabinet of Ministers decided to extend the national quarantine until May 11. The government made this decision, relying on the forecast of Ukrainian scholars who expect two more waves of the epidemic: one late April and the other between May 3 and May 8. An increase in the infection rate is predicted due to quarantine violations by parishioners on Easter holidays.