Ontario Restaurants Preparing For Restriction-Free Business

It has been a long and tough road for us all, hasn’t it? The beginning of March comes in just a few days. Undoubtedly, we’re all thinking about the fact that the new month will officially make it two whole years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. As we’ve noted in numerous blog before, restaurant owners were hit particularly hard by restrictions brought on by the crisis.

At many points throughout the past 24 months, restaurant owners across Canada had to shut the doors to their dining rooms. Instead, orders for takeout and delivery were the only ways to get customers their food. Naturally, this significantly impacted sales. In fact, many restaurants weren’t able to survive such shutdowns.

Ontario restrictions will be lifted on March 1st.

The beginning of March will generate some smiles in the province of Ontario. Burdened by a number of social gathering restrictions for many months, the province is set to open up again. As reported by Matthew Trevithick of Global News, “on March 1, capacity limits will be lifted in all remaining indoor public settings, and proof-of-vaccination requirements will end for all settings. Masking requirements will remain in effect, with a specific timeline to lift the measure to come at a future date.”

Trevithick’s report covers the feelings of restaurant and bar owners in the London, Ontario area. Not surprisingly, many are happy about their reclaimed ability to conduct business as usual. Some, however, expressed disappointment in the seemingly-inconsistent regulations that were passed for members of their industry.

“Good to see some good news for a change.”

Mike Smith is the owner of no less than four establishments: Joe Kool’s, Fellini Koolini’s, The Runt Club and Toboggan. In Trevithick’s article, he highlighted the fact that his industry appeared to be unfairly burdened by COVID-19-related restrictions. “Good to see some good news for a change, but we wondered why it happened in the first place,” he is quoted as saying, “Why restaurant, hospitality industry, gyms were given restrictions that others weren’t.”

Billy Thompson is the owner of The Scot’s Corner pub. He shares Smith’s sentiments, pointing out that the damage the pandemic has caused his business may have long-lasting effects.?“We don’t have people coming out watching sports because everybody, for the last two years, has bought themselves big TVs and they’re used to getting their beer from The Beer Store and sitting (and) watching at home,” Thompson shared, “It’s definitely going to take some time to, like, make people’s brains realize that it’s okay to go back out again.”

The Unity Payments team agrees completely.

We believe that it will take some time for people to get back to doing exactly what they were doing before the pandemic. After all, it’s not like the pandemic has been deemed over. With that said, we proudly offer restaurant owners an alternative way of ensuring they continue to generate revenue.

Contact us to quickly set up your own online ordering system for your restaurant! With it, you can easily set up your menu, make live menu updates, manage inventory, process takeout and delivery requests, schedule pick-ups, create promo codes and more! To get started, please don’t hesitate to call us at 1-800-661-3761 or email us at [email protected].