So it’s been a month since we entered a lockdown here in the Czech Republic to fight the spread of the coronavirus. We know that many of the guests of our Prague food tours have fallen in love in Prague and have been asking us about how we were doing, so this is an update about life in Prague after a month in quarantine. If you’re Czech, feel free to skip this unless you want to know what our opinion on the current and future state of restaurants in Prague and on our very own presence and future is. So here we go.
The mood in Prague
It’s been a month since the lockdown and quarantine were instituted. And I think the atmosphere has changed. While in the first few days, people were genuinely scared to leave the house (Zuzi was so stressed out she lost her credit card on her first shopping trip out, true story), I think now people have had just about enough of the quarantine and the morale has dropped quite substantially. We drove through the town today and while the centre was a ghost town in the first few days, it was… well, packed wouldn’t be the right word, but let’s just say it was not empty.
There was a line of about 20 people outside of Creme de la Creme, a popular ice-cream parlor (that sells through a take-out window), and they even rent paddle boats. If you realize we’re in a state of emergency and the official lockdown is still under way, that is pretty… what’s the word… peculiar? The problem is that the Easter weekend is a four-day weekend and the weather is gorgeous (it was 23C / 73F on Sunday, sunny), and people just want to leave the house and literally smell the flowers, with the spring just starting.
There is still discipline though: face masks are mandatory and people will give you attitude or at least strange looks if you don’t wear one. Also, social distancing seems to be the norm: those 20 people in that line were spread out over nearly the full block. So people are aware what they have to do. It’s just that the guard is a bit down and people have become wary of the whole thing. The numbers are not rising exponentially and it seems that our healthcare system has managed to cope with the coronavirus spread for now, so the people are just about ready to have the restrictions, or at least some of them, lifted. (Just to give you some numbers: after 30-odd days, we have had over 6,000 confirmed cases - in a country of 10.7 million people - and the assumed reproduction rate has been below 1 for the past three days, which in theory means that the number of people infected with the virus should be dropping.)
The restrictions, the debates and the discussions
So just to remind you of what’s up: all non-essential international travel is forbidden, as is just leaving the house without a real purpose (work, essential shopping), although you are allowed to take walks or bike rides in the nature. All schools are closed, as are all non-essential shops and services (don’t ask women about their hair colors) and all restaurants. High-schoolers have so far no idea when and how will they hold school-leaving exams and university admission tests. Gatherings with attendance of more than two are forbidden (we will have a mail-in vote for the board of our home owner’s association, because the term of the current board expires in two weeks. And yes, you can vote for crazy, or a different type of crazy. Some things are the same no matter where you are.) Only a few days ago, they allowed some non-team sports outside, so tennis singles are allowed again, but you may not use the locker rooms or showers within the facilities.
There are a few points of contention among the general public:
How prepared the government was when the virus first hit the country. Those government’s reassuring words about the number of respirators and ventilators available did not seem to be fully aligned with the reality. (Translation: they were lying. We had to buy everything in a hurry and at a huge cost.)
The big issue is compensations to businesses who lost their entire or most of their incomes due to the governmental response to the virus. Small business owners feel they are left to cope with the fallout of these regulations without much of governmental aid.
Employee compensations: as it is now, employees who cannot perform their work duties due to governmental regulations (e.g. shop assistants in shops that must remain closed) are paid 100% percent of their wages while they stay at home, with the government footing 80% of that bill in compensations to the employers. On top of that, the government will pay extra money to parents of children below 13 years of age for having to take care of them at home while the school is out.
Compared to that, compensation to self-employed individuals is so low it’s not even funny: it’s CZK 25,000 (just over USD 1,000) in a lump sum, supposed to cover the entire duration of the quarantine. This has caused quite a bit of commotion among the self-employed, but not enough sympathy among the rest of the country that would force the government to raise that number. So all we got out of this were a few on-line memes about how miserable self-employed individuals are right now.
There is a big debate over what to do next. The fact that the government cannot or does not want to communicate what the plan is going forward leads to frustration and/or anger among some.
Some people (us included) fear that some people in the government have gotten too used to bossing people around. Some officials seem to have gained quite a bit of confidence with their newly-amassed power, and they seem to be needing constant reminders that they are still accountable to the people, and that some of their decisions are up for public debate, and not beyond it.
Prague’s food industry
Three to four weeks into the quarantine, Prague’s food industry is just waking up to the reality that what they have on their hands is not a long „vacation“ but an existential threat. We have seen the first major insolvency of Kuchyn, a member restaurant of the Ambiente group, that was listed in our Prague Foodie Map. That was the real wake-up call: that even a big restaurant group can lose what seemed to be a fairly well-run and a popular restaurant.
At the moment, delivery is king, since restaurants cannot legally served food to people on their premises. Which has lead to widespread redundancy of waiting staff, really. The problem is, there has been a widespread - and slightly illegal - practice among many restaurants of paying minimum wage to their staff and paying the rest „off the books“. Which means the staff of many restaurants are now in theory receiving 80% of minimum wage. Not great for either the employees or the employers.
Czech diners, and by extension restaurants, are pretty conservative (whether we like to admit it or not), and not all restaurants have been so far successful in adjusting to the new reality. Some have though: Etapa bistro in the Karlin district has set up an online shop two days after the quarantine started, selling not just finished food but also produce from their suppliers, whereby they take care of all the stakeholders: their staff, the farms that supply to them, and the clients. From what we’ve heard, they are in the black. On the other hand, other restaurants have been laying off some staff.
Let’s be honest here: the times were good in the past few years and some restaurants may not have been the pinnacles of efficiency when it came to staffing and distribution of work, simply because they didn’t have to be. (We know a popular Prague coffee shop that had about a dozen “managers”. True story.) The money was pouring in and everybody was happy, so why spoil the mood? We suspect that if there is one change in the food industry that will come out of all this, it will be a bigger focus on processes, work distribution and efficiency. Simply, the same amount of work, done by less staff. No more smiles and jokes in the open kitchen, but tight focus and hard work.
There have been talks of reopening the restaurants some time later in May, but still within the realms of mandatory social distancing - the tables should be some two meters / six feet apart from each other, all staff should wear face masks, and the opening hours will be limited. So far, we have not figured some things out: how will the diners eat with their face masks on? Will smaller businesses with small rooms stay shut if they can only accommodate a handful of diners under these new rules? One thing is clear: even if the restaurants reopen, it will have to be with some major adjustments to their operations… and expectations when it comes to income.
The other thing that is definitely not helping the food industry in Prague is the absolute non-existence of tourism at the moment. Some restaurants have come to rely heavily on tourism (all the Michelin stars and other fine dining places, for instance), and with this income now gone, they will have no other choice but to re-focus on the local audience, or face extinction. Which brings us to…
Taste of Prague as a food tour business
Let’s not sugar-coat this. As a food tour company, we’re screwed.
Global tourism is on hold, and who know how long’s that going to last. So right now, our core business is no business. We’re not whining. We get it. But we hate to see our fantastic team who have come to rely on us for at least some part of their income, sit there at home, with mortgages and bills to pay, while there is very little we can actually do for them right now.
And who knows what will happen to tourism in the medium run, anyway? Won’t tourists be seen globally as these rich opportunist a-holes who run the risk of spreading disease for their own enjoyment? We’re sure they’ll be met with open arms by the hotels and the entire tourism and hospitality industry, but will they be able to enjoy a beer in a local pub, happily chatting away with the locals? Will the locals welcome them with open arms, too?
It does not seem like it, especially in places like Prague that may have suffered from over-tourism before the lockdowns: the locals are genuinely enjoying „Prague without tourists“ and revisit places that we have given up to tourism before the coronavirus outbreak. So even if borders reopen, we do not expect the number of tourists pouring in to match the numbers before the outbreak.
And with unemployment numbers rising and the economy heading into what seems to show signs of a global recession, will tourism pick up where it stopped as if nothing had happened? We honestly don’t think so.
So we have to think of something else to do, at least in the short term, and focus on a local audience that we have had for some time, but never really had a product for. We are starting with the „Eating Alone Together“ series of dinners with delivery. We are honestly not making any money on this. It’s just something we wanted to do:
to support the local, independent restaurants we love and don’t want to see gone;
to hopefully build a „brand“ for the local audience while we think of something we can turn into a viable business, ideally with the involvement of our team;
because we do miss the restaurant experience and we miss the social aspect of dining while we’re all contained at home;
because it’s something to do and it’s genuinely fun. We have been in the hospitality business for years and it is refreshing to be serving people again after a month or so.
The last two episodes with Kro Kitchen and Paul Day were great and gave us lots of nice feedback and a lot of warm and fuzzy feeling. We’re planning more - we are joining Big Smokers BBQ place for the next dinner - and looking forward to them all.
In any case, this is it from us for now, please keep safe and healthy, and stay tuned for more updates in a month’s time.
Happy holidays!