Restaurant bookings surge, but capacity slashed

Singapore

SOME popular restaurants were on Tuesday overwhelmed by more requests to reserve tables than their reduced seating could accommodate, ahead of the resumption of dining in on Friday and Father's Day this weekend.

Most of the reservations are for this weekend, according to restaurant booking platforms and restaurateurs. Some extend to the next week, and as far as next month.

Restaurant booking platforms said that reservations surged overnight after it was announced that dining in would be allowed again as Singapore moves into Phase 2 of its reopening. "In the first few minutes of opening up reservations, we were getting one reservation every second," Chope founder and chief executive Arrif Ziaudeen said.

Chope has since received close to 10,000 reservations, 80 per cent of which are for this weekend.

Eatigo said restaurant bookings are now back to around 50 per cent of pre-Covid-19 levels. The platform used to serve more than 20,000 people per day. About two-thirds of the current bookings are for Friday till this weekend; the remaining is for the following week.

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Likewise, Quandoo said it received almost one-third of the bookings it would normally receive on a Saturday in June. The "most booked" day so far is June 27 (next Saturday), and bookings for that day are double that for this Saturday.

On Quandoo, Wolfgang's Steakhouse Singapore, for example, completely booked out in two hours after opening up for bookings. The first available date to book a table at the restaurant is now Sunday.

Scaled by Ah Hua Kelong's next available date is June 23, as at Tuesday afternoon. Dining in also appears to be limited to dinner hours (5.30pm to 10.15pm). During the circuit breaker, the restaurant opened from 12pm-3pm for lunch, and 5pm-8pm for dinner.

On Chope, the next available opening at Yum Cha Restaurant's Chinatown outlet is July 1 at 6pm, as at Tuesday afternoon.

Other food establishments like Burnt Ends and Min Jiang received so many requests that they only took in booking requests tentatively, and to be confirmed later.

Restaurateurs were cautiously optimistic, however. For instance, Loh Lik Peng of Unlisted Collection, which runs food establishments including Burnt Ends, said that he expects the demand for dining in to be sustained over the next few weeks, but this has to be viewed against the restaurants' "vastly reduced capacity".

Like Burnt Ends, eateries placing their tables one metre apart as the government's safe-management measures dictate are expecting to see seating capacity halved.

Meanwhile, some F&B operators, worried about balancing the dine-in demand with food delivery orders, are reducing delivery slots or halting deliveries.

Yum Cha, which already has online food orders queued up for Father's Day, will now cap incoming online orders at one-third of the amount it accepted during the circuit breaker period, said deputy director Melody Tan. It will also activate all staff.

Fine dining restaurant Les Amis will only resume dine-in operations from June 22 as 90 per cent of its ingredients are imported from France and will take time to reach Singapore, but the demand for reservations already looks "very promising".

It will cease takeaways and deliveries after Sunday. "Rather than dividing our attention between takeaways and dine in, we've decided to focus solely on guests who are dining in Les Amis," the restaurant's spokesperson said.

Chope said it is helping restaurants with table planning and management for safe-distancing, and even working out deposits for table reservations so as to manage traffic and reduce no-shows. "The industry is raring to go, but we are doing our utmost to ensure that restaurants are enabled to do it responsibly," said Mr Ziaudeen.