Many cus­tomers were blue when Blue Star Din­er, lo­cat­ed in Mar­aval, an­nounced on its so­cial me­dia pages that it would be shut­ting down its op­er­a­tions on June 25.

But the re­ac­tion of the din­er’s cus­tomers to news of its clo­sure caused its own­ers to re­think their de­ci­sion.
The es­tab­lish­ment is ex­pect­ed to re­open its doors on Ju­ly 22, 2023, as man­age­ment is cur­rent­ly work­ing out the var­i­ous lo­gis­tics.
The restau­rant, which falls un­der the Trot­ters Group, took to its so­cial me­dia pages last month to let its cus­tomers know about the clo­sure: “We ex­tend our heart­felt thanks to our loy­al cus­tomers and amaz­ing staff for your un­wa­ver­ing sup­port.
Let’s make the most of our re­main­ing time to­geth­er and cre­ate last­ing mem­o­ries.”
The post gen­er­at­ed 242 likes and 134 com­ments from sev­er­al cus­tomers who ex­pressed their sad­ness about the restau­rant’s clo­sure.
One user said: “I loved your place! The ser­vice and the food were al­ways great! You will be missed!”
An­oth­er said “Oh no!!! boss place!! I think if it was in a dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tion, busi­ness would have been bet­ter !!! Please re­lo­cate.”
While an­oth­er com­ment­ed “Man­age­ment need­ed to ad­just to the cli­mate so un­for­tu­nate. Loved this place. So sad.”
The sen­ti­ments ex­pressed and the last-minute rush of cus­tomers be­fore the June 25 clos­ing date, forced man­age­ment to sit around the ta­ble to re­vis­it its de­ci­sion.
Trot­ters Group chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Pe­ter George told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian the man­age­ment of he Blue Star Din­er was hold­ing off on the de­ci­sion to close as it knew the prod­uct was good, but the vol­ume of cus­tomers just was not there in the last three years.
George in­di­cat­ed that BlueS­tar Din­er opened its doors on No­vem­ber 2019 and the busi­ness was on an up­ward tra­jec­to­ry, es­pe­cial­ly when it start­ed op­er­at­ing for around the clock over week­ends.

But then the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic struck in March 2020 and busi­ness fell off.
George said the restau­rant was per­form­ing be­yond the ex­pec­ta­tions of man­age­ment be­fore COVID-19.
“Dur­ing­COVID, when Gov­ern­ment opened and closed the restau­rant in­dus­try, we opened back the Din­er and it was not per­form­ing any­where near the oth­er restau­rants un­der the group such as Bu­zo Os­te­ria Ital­iana, Trot­ters, and Ama­ra. I knew from COVID we had a prob­lem as it was on­ly reach­ing 29 per cent, com­pared to what the es­tab­lish­ment was per­form­ing at in pre-COVID times,” George ex­plained.
He not­ed be­fore de­cid­ing to close man­age­ment gave the busi­ness a year to re­cov­er. How­ev­er, when the din­er an­nounced the clo­sure, the week­end of June 24, the cus­tomer vol­ume was very high.
“Bus­es were drop­ping off peo­ple and there were long lines to come in­to dine, so with that dis­play, I gave the team the green light to re­launch and give the busi­ness a try once again,” George said.
Asked how much was in­vest­ed to open the restau­rant in 2019, the CEO said $4 mil­lion was spent to out­fit the es­tab­lish­ment with that retro feel and the vin­tage blue car that many cus­tomers flocked to take pic­tures.
“Den­ny’s Restau­rant was at the same spot, so some of the mon­ey was spent in bring­ing in the vin­tage fur­ni­ture, equip­ment, and a mil­lion dol­lars was spent in sig­nage to cre­ate the 1950s ex­pe­ri­ence,” he high­light­ed.

Do­ing things dif­fer­ent­ly

Giv­ing more in­sight in­to the re­open­ing, Vic­tor Ray­mond, op­er­a­tions man­ag­er for the Trot­ters group, said the team is re­view­ing the menu to make it at­trac­tive, along with be­ing more cost-ef­fec­tive for the cus­tomers.
“We are go­ing to be look­ing at a more eco­nom­ic menu, to get a wider reach of cus­tomers as well, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing lunch hours. So we are look­ing at a lunch meal from $50 to $100, as the reg­u­lar price range was from $100 up­wards,” he out­lined.
With the rush on the two days fol­low­ing the clo­sure an­nounce­ment, Ray­mond said if the din­er was mak­ing that kind of rev­enue ona reg­u­lar ba­sis, the team would not have con­sid­ered clos­ing.
“With the sales not meet­ing its month­ly tar­get, it was dif­fi­cult to main­tain labour costs, in­creas­ing food prices and over­head costs. To run a din­er like ours, you could not have less than a 20-mem­ber staff. We had a head count of 30 but when COVID struck, the num­ber re­duced to 22. Floor man­agers had to be per­form­ing var­i­ous tasks to keep the op­er­a­tions go­ing,” he re­marked.
Ray­mond is hope­ful that this re­launch with the changes would work and that the restau­rant could once again be sus­tain­able.
Ques­tioned how Trot­ters in Gulf City was do­ing, as it opened its doors at the height of the pan­dem­ic on Au­gust 15, 2020, Ray­mond said it is now be­com­ing sus­tain­able as man­age­ment has added en­ter­tain­ment to the din­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, which is be­ing well re­ceived by cus­tomers.
Ac­cord­ing to Ray­mond, a re­cov­ery from the pan­dem­ic is be­ing seen in the group’s oth­er restau­rants, and rev­enue is go­ing back to pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els.
He al­so said that the restau­rants are see­ing an uptick in take-away meals af­ter the pan­dem­ic.
“Many peo­ple have shift­ed from din­ing to or­der­ing food on the apps and stay­ing at home in­stead of dress­ing up. We still have busy Fri­days and week­ends, but the shift is vis­i­bly seen,” George added.
The ques­tion was posed to the op­er­a­tions man­ag­er on whether the group will be bet­ter equipped to deal with an­oth­er pan­dem­ic in the fu­ture, Ray­mond said: “Def­i­nite­ly.
“We know ex­act­ly what to do, we un­der­stand the rules and guide­lines, and the restau­rants will be able to ad­just quick­ly. The idea is al­ready there so we know what to do and every­thing we did has been doc­u­ment­ed. It would al­so de­pend on the re­stric­tions be­ing en­forced by the gov­ern­ment,” Ray­mond re­vealed.