A year after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland and the introduction of the first lockdown, almost half of the premises in the broadly understood catering and event industry have suspended or closed, according to a report by the Briefly portal.
“Currently, at the beginning of March 2021, there is a clear division into three segments within the broadly understood horeca and event industry:
Restaurants and cafes – most (60%) are take-away
Clubs and event spaces – most (70%) have suspended their activities
Hotels – the majority (84%) operate in accordance with the sanitary regime, “the press release reads.
“Poles are eager to leave their homes and reopen their entertainment venues. Over the past 12 months, restaurants and clubs published the most popular posts on social media in May 2020, when they informed about the opening after the first lockdown. The venues are receiving positive feedback from customers and counting on ‘deferred demand’, said Tomasz Szczęśniak, co-founder and president of Briefly.
Only 5% of the premises managed to completely change the profile of their activity in order to be able to continue functioning in the epidemic reality. Typically, this consisted in starting to offer catering in delivery or instead of organizing occasional parties, it was renting out office space (training, workshops), also reported.
Before the first closure of the catering industry in March 2020, restaurants (with the exception of, for example, pizzerias) did not invest in promoting take-away offers. It was not a business segment that was as profitable as serving food on the spot. The pandemic and the freezing of the economy have forced a surge in the number of gastro establishments that offer take-out and delivery, emphasized.
“The food delivery market is certainly the biggest (and rather the only) winner of the pandemic period. But with the high commissions of the biggest platforms, restaurateurs are trying to encourage customers to pick up in person: they offer discounts on pickup (instead of delivery) and sometimes they just ask customers outright for ordering directly, not through intermediaries such as Pyszne, Uber Eats or Wolt “- we read further.
The report was prepared by the Briefly portal team on the basis of information on 430 gastronomic and event venues from Poland.
