Eve Jeffery
You can feel the excitement across the Northern Rivers as this morning, restaurants and cafés open their doors and back to the closest thing to normality in the last two months.
With a retraction of many of the recent social isolation rules from today, businesses can allow up to 50 patrons into their premises as long the required social distancing rules are applied.
Shelter in Lennox Head Director Andrew Love, says he is happy and relieved to be able to get back in the swing of things after a difficult period. ‘The main difficulties have been adjusting as quickly as possible to the regulations – changing from a restaurant to a takeaway / general store, back to 10 seats and now back to 50, has been a lot of new challenges and fast pace thinking.’
Mr Love also says he is looking forward to being able to can cater for more people who a looking forward to a dining experience, not just take away food. ‘It’s been a good challenge for us and has prompted a few new ideas, like the take-home meals which have been selling well. We will continue to do those.’
Mr Love says he is so happy to be opening back up this morning for 50 seats. ‘We won’t be able to fit the full 50 inside because of the spacing requirements, but we are lucky we can fit the remainder outside,’ he said. ‘We are happy to go back to a full à la carte menu and be able to service tables again.’
Mr Love says he Lennox community has really shown its strength in supporting Shelter and other restaurants. ‘For that we are grateful – it’s also the reason we can open our doors again, without it we would have struggled.’
