The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the var­i­ous re­stric­tions put in place by the gov­ern­ment to stop its spread have re­sult­ed in some pop­u­lar restau­rants across the coun­try clos­ing their doors per­ma­nent­ly.

In Ju­ly alone Chaud Restau­rant an­nounced that it would be clos­ing af­ter 15 years, Hak­ka Restau­rant and Bar said it would be shut­ting the doors of its Ari­api­ta Av­enue lo­ca­tion, and Joe’s Piz­za Ital­ian Restau­rant an­nounced the per­ma­nent clo­sure of its St Au­gus­tine branch.

But while oth­ers have been shut­ting their doors, More Vi­no has opened a new door al­to­geth­er.

“We are al­ways look­ing to find new op­por­tu­ni­ties to bring our pas­sion for the high­est qual­i­ty sushi to our loy­al cus­tomers across Trinidad and To­ba­go and we are thrilled to an­nounce the of­fi­cial launch of our new lo­ca­tion in Val­park Plaza, Val­sayn this Fri­day,” More Vi­no post­ed on their of­fi­cial Face­book page last week.

The Busi­ness Guardian reached out to More Vi­no to find out what was the think­ing be­hind open­ing a new branch at this time.

“Af­ter 16 years of be­ing in the restau­rant in­dus­try, adapt­ing has be­come sec­ond na­ture to us,” David Stone said.

“When the pan­dem­ic hit, we were chal­lenged to keep our busi­ness go­ing in a time of ex­treme change. Dine-in was shut down, but cus­tomers were still call­ing for their sushi fix – in many ways, the en­joy­ment of a favourite food be­came even more pop­u­lar as peo­ple stayed in­doors,” he said.

Stone said this en­cour­aged More Vi­no to think about ways they could reach out to cus­tomers be­yond Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do where they al­ready have restau­rants lo­cat­ed.

“And the idea to open a small store­front with a fo­cus on con­ve­nient and fresh­ly pre­pared sushi was born,” Stone said.

“We want­ed to cater to our cus­tomers in a safe and con­ve­nient way in a big­ger ge­o­graph­i­cal area and did so first through our grab and go dis­tri­b­u­tion but de­cid­ed to take a risk and go for a store­front in Val­sayn as well,” he said.

Stone said their cus­tomers can ex­pect the same “high qual­i­ty” sushi, dumplings and tem­pu­ra items as they are ac­cus­tomed to hav­ing at the oth­er lo­ca­tions at Ari­api­ta and San Fer­nan­do.

He said More Vi­no is of­fer­ing the same Japan­ese favourites but in a “con­ve­nient and easy to ac­cess” way.

“The store it­self re­flects Kawaii themes typ­i­cal­ly seen in Japan and has a wel­com­ing and friend­ly at­mos­phere. The Val­park branch would be open for take­away and de­liv­ery ser­vice. Friend­ly and pro­fes­sion­al cus­tomer ser­vice re­mains a high pri­or­i­ty to us as well,” he said.

Be­cause of the clo­sure of restau­rants dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, More Vi­no be­gan of­fer­ing some of their prod­ucts at Lin­da’s and Su­per­pharm out­lets na­tion­wide.

This will con­tin­ue, Stone said.

“We have been pleased with the re­sponse to Lin­da’s and Su­per­pharm sales.

Con­tin­ues on BG11

From BG10

“Con­ve­nience to the cus­tomer con­tin­ues to be a main fac­tor in these times. It gives us a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to sup­ply our sushi and chick­en bombs across the na­tion and this ser­vice will con­tin­ue,” he said.

On Oc­to­ber 11, the TT Safe Zones ini­tia­tive was of­fi­cial­ly launched in this coun­try.

These safe zones al­low ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed mem­bers of the pub­lic to ac­cess restau­rants as well as cin­e­mas, bars, gyms and casi­nos.

But even with in­house din­ing al­lowed to re­sume since two Mon­days ago, Stone said More Vi­no’s cus­tomers will still have to wait a lit­tle while longer for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to dine in­side its restau­rants, Stone said.

“The restau­rants at Ari­api­ta and San Fer­nan­do will re­open for in-house on the 22nd No­vem­ber. We made the de­ci­sion to de­lay the re­open­ing in or­der to give our staff am­ple time to clear­ly un­der­stand the re­quire­ments of open­ing as a safe zone and to make the best per­son­al de­ci­sion for them­selves. We look for­ward to wel­com­ing all of our cus­tomers for dine-in next month,” he said.

Stone said this year, just like last year when the pan­dem­ic of­fi­cial­ly ar­rived on T&T’s shores “has been very chal­leng­ing.”

“Restau­rants were closed for al­most four months dur­ing which time many ex­pens­es are still to be paid. Food costs have al­so been con­sis­tent­ly climb­ing which puts even more pres­sure on the restau­rant in­dus­try. More Vi­no is one of the longest-stand­ing restau­rants on the is­land and we have al­ways worked hard to find ways to adapt and con­tin­ue – we plan on con­tin­u­ing to fo­cus on our strengths, which has al­ways been to bring a high qual­i­ty, au­then­tic and de­li­cious food ex­pe­ri­ence to our cus­tomers each and every time we serve them,” he said.

“If the pan­dem­ic has taught us any­thing, it’s that plans should be made flex­i­bly. For now, we want to fo­cus on our pas­sion for Japan­ese cui­sine and con­tin­ue to el­e­vate the food ex­pe­ri­ence on the is­land. We plan on bring­ing more unique ex­pe­ri­ences to our restau­rant soon and al­ways have some­thing new cook­ing in the kitchen…” Stone said.

On Valen­tine’s Day in 2005 More Vi­no opened up its Ari­api­ta doors.

Ini­tial­ly a re­tail store, the con­cept was redi­rect­ed to a wine bar.

In 2009, “More Sushi” was cre­at­ed and it is now known as More Vi­no More Sushi show­cas­ing a wide ar­ray of sushi, wine, spir­its and cock­tails.

With the suc­cess of the Ari­api­ta Av­enue’s lo­ca­tion, it was de­cid­ed to branch out to San Fer­nan­do and of­fer an­oth­er ex­pe­ri­ence to an­oth­er part of the coun­try.

More Vi­no More Sushi opened on De­cem­ber 21, 2011, ful­ly equipped with a down­stairs and up­stairs din­ing area and out­door deck­ing.

This year marked 16 years since More Vi­no’s ex­is­tence.