[imagesource: Perseverance Tavern / Facebook]

Over the next few months and weeks, many of your favourite restaurants, bars, and pubs will turn off their taps and shutter their windows.

The hospitality industry is a tough nut to crack at the best of times, but with the food and beverage industry all but collapsing under the first few months of lockdown, the writing is really on the wall.

Yesterday’s #JobsSaveLives protests across the country aimed to raise awareness around what the Restaurant Collective (R|C) says will be a “domino effect”, with the closing of restaurants leading to reduced taxes, greater demand on the government for UIF grants, landlords with empty properties, and an increase in crime.

No establishment is safe, even the oldest pub in the country, and this week brought news that Perseverance Tavern, the 212-year-old pub on Buitenkant Street in the Cape Town CBD, is shutting.

This from Percy’s Facebook page:

That last line makes it clear that they’re not throwing in the towel permanently just yet, but the current owner, James Charton, is realistic about the tough times to come.

Speaking to News24, Charton opened up about their plight:

He also spoke with CapeTalk’s Refilwe Moloto, starting with the lockdown beginning back in March:

Given that we are a pub and serving alcohol is everything to us, we told our staff to stay home, stay safe and we would look after them. At that stage, we had hoped for maybe a month or two…

The announcement then, at the end of last week, that alcohol sales would be stopped altogether, really put us in a bit of a pickle…

Charton says that 20 full-time staff have now been retrenched, which is especially tough to stomach when you consider that some have worked at Persie’s from as far back as 2004.

Whilst acknowledging that he is “probably in the privileged position to bounce back eventually”, the same isn’t necessarily true for those who have been retrenched:

But these guys, they live for these paychecks and I really feel their pain. A very difficult conversation to have with them, to look them in the eyes and say we can’t keep going like this.

Here’s that interview in full:

[sources:news24&capetalk]