Open and at your service

Pubs, restaurants and cafes opened their doors to dine-in customers this week after the State Government relaxed coronavirus restrictions. Earlier this month, Premier Mark McGowan announced up to 20 patrons could be seated inside a venue at any time, as long as each party was separated by 4sqm, as part of phase two of its roadmap to recovery. The North West Brewing Co joined other popular venues in swinging their doors open on Monday, including Onyx on Sharpe, Stadium 26, and Blanche. North West Brewing owner Dan Scott said the eatery would be taking bookings for two-hour blocks to maintain social distancing guidelines. “We’ll be doing two-hour sessions in the beer garden — people come in have their meals, their drinks and then the next group of people will come in for their two hours,” he said. Mr Scott said the venue would continue to offer takeaway meals to help cover the increased operating costs involved with dine-in service. Mr Scott said the new guidelines would allow the brewery to ease into reopening. “Since we’ve been closed and doing new ways of business there’s a lot to do. You neglect a few things because you have changed your business model,” he said. “Having 20 people here and staging it gives us time to still do small improvements.” Lo’s Fusion Cafe also opened it’s doors to the public for dine-in meals on Monday, with team leader Ginger Lo saying the business had struggled during the earlier restrictions. “From the business’ point of view it’s good to have people start to dine in,” she said. “Business was very slow for quite a while, but as restrictions eased, our business started to pick up again from last week.” Mrs Lo said the restrictions still raised issues if large groups came into the venue. “For the size of our cafe we can only have 16 customers inside the cafe, so it is a little bit difficult with how we take bookings,” she said.