Whilst many cafes and restaurants are re-opening their indoor seating this Wednesday, we have made the decision not to re-open our cafes at this time. We understand this will not be the news many of our customers are hoping for, but there are a number of reasons behind this decision; our staff’s safety and customers’ experience is at the heart of it.
Our shops do not look the same as they used to, with screens, queueing systems and social distancing in place. The experience we hope is still a good one, but it is certainly different. We have spent a lot of time discussing whether we can safely re-open our cafes and while there are many measures we can put in place to welcome seated customers, we cannot change the fact that we must also look after our staff. We have very small areas behind our counters, and it is not possible to bring in the additional staff required to manage our cafes, without losing the safe social distancing that we currently have in place. We cannot offer a good sit-in experience without at least two extra staff, and in all but one of our cafes, there just is not the space for this many staff to safely distance themselves under the current guidelines.
It has been a hugely difficult situation to operate our business in this new way, losing our café strand for the time being, but we hope our loyal customers will understand that we not only need to keep our staff safe, but we also would not want to open and have our customers receive a below-par experience due to the many huge changes we would need to put in place in order to re-open. Our cafes will be back and better-than-ever before you know it, we’ll all just need to patiently wait for that time to come.
One thing we have been working on and which we will announce in more detail soon is a new outdoor café at our Ceres Road bakery. While space is more difficult to change inside, we have a large outdoor area and are busy working away to create ‘The Garden @ Fisher & Donaldson’, an outdoor under-cover café with ample social distancing and the perfect garden party atmosphere; great for cakes with relatives, afternoon tea with friends or a large coffee while your kids play out on the grass.
We thank you for your continued support at this difficult time for business, and we look forward to making you a cuppa in a china cup as soon as we can. Until then, we are doing takeaway drinks at all of our shops, as well as re-introducing takeaway breakfast and lunch options very soon.