Hong Kong News

Nonpartisan, Noncommercial, unconstrained.
Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Restaurant bookings fill up as Hong Kong prepares to ease Covid dine-in curbs

Restaurant bookings fill up as Hong Kong prepares to ease Covid dine-in curbs

Several high-end restaurants are full or close to completely booked, with no openings at some places until end of June.

Bookings are pouring in for Hong Kong’s fine dining restaurants with reservations stretching to the end of June, as consumers for a “revenge spending” binge ahead of the much-anticipated lifting of dining restrictions on Thursday.

Several medium to high-end restaurants told the Post they had received an influx of bookings for dinner. April’s remaining weekends are fully booked, while those in May are over 70 per cent booked.

However, some places have reported difficulty in recruiting enough staff, and the ones that can find hires have been forced to raise salaries.


The uptick in reservations follows the government’s announcement last week that restaurants can offer dine-in services until 10pm, up from the current 6pm, starting on Thursday. Each table can also seat as many as four people, up from two.

Banquets can host a maximum of 20 people, another curb eased amid improvements in the city’s fifth wave of Covid-19 infections. All catering staff must be vaccinated and undergo rapid antigen tests every three days.

With the relaxation of rules coming on the back of the government’s distribution of the first half of consumption vouchers worth a total HK$10,000 (US$1,275) to residents earlier this month, one operator expected the battered catering sector to embrace a boom in business.

At L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon at The Landmark in Central, an employee said lunch slots were fully booked until the end of June. Dinner openings for weekends in April at the Michelin three-starred restaurant were almost all taken.

The staff member said bookings for dinners on weekends in May were about 80 per cent full. “Patrons can make reservations themselves on our online system so tables have been quickly booked,” he said.

Other fine dining restaurants, Glassbelly Tea Lab and Kyoku in Causeway Bay, Nan Tei in Central and L’Envol in Wan Chai, all reported a flurry of bookings ahead of the relaxation of business curbs on the city’s 16,000 eateries.

Wing Yeung, founder of Glassbelly, said evenings were fully booked for weekends in April and May.

“Dinner bookings for the weekends have been exceptionally good. We’ve specially adjusted our menus with more umami dishes to woo our customers,” she said.

Wing Yeung, founder of Glassbelly, where evenings are fully booked for weekends in April and May.


Ken Li, teppanyaki head chef at Japanese restaurant Kyoku, said lunch bookings were full until June, and more than 70 per cent of dinner slots for the next two months were taken.

“Diners have not enjoyed a night out for a long time, so they will take this chance of rule-easing to have gatherings with families and friends,” he said.

Louise Ching, manager of Japanese skewer restaurant Nan Tei, said he noticed that Hongkongers had started to go on a “revenge spending” binge with their consumption vouchers.

“Our restaurant is already fully booked for Thursday. We expect more people to gradually dine out and the catering sector will enjoy a business boom,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Pirata, which runs 25 restaurants, said bookings began pouring in as soon the easing of restrictions was known.

“We believe bookings will further increase by 50 to 70 per cent towards the end of May and hopefully be back in full swing once again at the end of the second quarter,” she said.

An employee for French restaurant L’Envol said dinner bookings for weekends were full until mid-May.

A senior staff of a catering firm operating over 30 high-end restaurants in Hong Kong said several of its restaurants in Central expected to be 80 to 90 per cent full in the first week of evening dine-in resumption, going up to 100 per cent the following week.

“Bookings are very good, like other restaurants in the same district,” he told the Post. “But we have issues in hiring frontline staff after the protracted suspension of dinner business.”

While restaurants have reported an influx in bookings, many operators also said they were facing a manpower crunch.


To prepare for reopening in the evenings, the firm began to increase payroll a few weeks ago when the government revealed its intentions to ease dining restrictions. Despite that, it still had a 30 per cent shortfall in its workforce.

“We had a candidate who lives in Tung Chung and declined our offer to work as a waiter on the grounds that Central is too far away,” the senior staff said. “There was a dishwashing candidate who turned away from a job interview immediately, saying ‘the restaurant is so big, which means there are a lot of dishes to wash’.”

He also gave the example of a waiter who was hired but failed to show up on the first day of work and did not give any notice. “A week later, we were able to contact the waiter, who said he was sick and would no longer join us.”

Salaries for part-time workers were also on the rise along with higher demand for catering jobs, he said. “On average, a part-time waiter or waitress costs HK$120 per hour on a weekend, which is about double from the HK$60-HK$70 previously.”

“Who said unemployment rate is high?” he said.

Newsletter

Related Articles

Hong Kong News
0:00
0:00
Close
It's always the people with the dirty hands pointing their fingers
Paper straws found to contain long-lasting and potentially toxic chemicals - study
FTX's Bankman-Fried headed for jail after judge revokes bail
Blackrock gets half a trillion dollar deal to rebuild Ukraine
Steve Jobs' Son Launches Venture Capital Firm With $200 Million For Cancer Treatments
Google reshuffles Assistant unit, lays off some staffers, to 'supercharge' products with A.I.
End of Viagra? FDA approved a gel against erectile dysfunction
UK sanctions Russians judges over dual British national Kara-Murza's trial
US restricts visa-free travel for Hungarian passport holders because of security concerns
America's First New Nuclear Reactor in Nearly Seven Years Begins Operations
Southeast Asia moves closer to economic unity with new regional payments system
Political leader from South Africa, Julius Malema, led violent racist chants at a massive rally on Saturday
Today Hunter Biden’s best friend and business associate, Devon Archer, testified that Joe Biden met in Georgetown with Russian Moscow Mayor's Wife Yelena Baturina who later paid Hunter Biden $3.5 million in so called “consulting fees”
'I am not your servant': IndiGo crew member, passenger get into row over airline meal
Singapore Carries Out First Execution of a Woman in Two Decades Amid Capital Punishment Debate
Spanish Citizenship Granted to Iranian chess player who removed hijab
US Senate Republican Mitch McConnell freezes up, leaves press conference
Speaker McCarthy says the United States House of Representatives is getting ready to impeach Joe Biden.
San Francisco car crash
This camera man is a genius
3D ad in front of Burj Khalifa
Next level gaming
BMW driver…
Google testing journalism AI. We are doing it already 2 years, and without Google biased propoganda and manipulated censorship
Unlike illegal imigrants coming by boats - US Citizens Will Need Visa To Travel To Europe in 2024
Musk announces Twitter name and logo change to X.com
The politician and the journalist lost control and started fighting on live broadcast.
The future of sports
Unveiling the Black Hole: The Mysterious Fate of EU's Aid to Ukraine
Farewell to a Music Titan: Tony Bennett, Renowned Jazz and Pop Vocalist, Passes Away at 96
Alarming Behavior Among Florida's Sharks Raises Concerns Over Possible Cocaine Exposure
Transgender Exclusion in Miss Italy Stirs Controversy Amidst Changing Global Beauty Pageant Landscape
Joe Biden admitted, in his own words, that he delivered what he promised in exchange for the $10 million bribe he received from the Ukraine Oil Company.
TikTok Takes On Spotify And Apple, Launches Own Music Service
Global Trend: Using Anti-Fake News Laws as Censorship Tools - A Deep Dive into Tunisia's Scenario
Arresting Putin During South African Visit Would Equate to War Declaration, Asserts President Ramaphosa
Hacktivist Collective Anonymous Launches 'Project Disclosure' to Unearth Information on UFOs and ETIs
Typo sends millions of US military emails to Russian ally Mali
Server Arrested For Theft After Refusing To Pay A Table's $100 Restaurant Bill When They Dined & Dashed
The Changing Face of Europe: How Mass Migration is Reshaping the Political Landscape
China Urges EU to Clarify Strategic Partnership Amid Trade Tensions
The Last Pour: Anchor Brewing, America's Pioneer Craft Brewer, Closes After 127 Years
Democracy not: EU's Digital Commissioner Considers Shutting Down Social Media Platforms Amid Social Unrest
Sarah Silverman and Renowned Authors Lodge Copyright Infringement Case Against OpenAI and Meta
Why Do Tech Executives Support Kennedy Jr.?
The New York Times Announces Closure of its Sports Section in Favor of The Athletic
BBC Anchor Huw Edwards Hospitalized Amid Child Sex Abuse Allegations, Family Confirms
Florida Attorney General requests Meta CEO's testimony on company's platforms' alleged facilitation of illicit activities
The Distorted Mirror of actual approval ratings: Examining the True Threat to Democracy Beyond the Persona of Putin
40,000 child slaves in Congo are forced to work in cobalt mines so we can drive electric cars.
×