Camille McEach­nie

The cut­back in busi­ness as a re­sult of the COVID-19 virus has re­duced Soul­mates Sports Bar in­come by 80 per cent, said its own­er Kate Davis-Choon.

The Soul­mate com­pa­ny has two restau­rants and bars—one in Scar­bor­ough called Soul­mate and the oth­er in Crown Point known as Over­hang.

Fac­ing re­duced in­come, full clo­sure for three and a half months, then re­duced hours—8 am to 10 pm dail—the com­pa­ny let go four of the 12 em­ploy­ees, Davis-Choon told Guardian Me­dia.

The oth­er eight are earn­ing a re­duced in­come as the Gov­ern­ment has re­duced the open­ing hours of bars and restau­rants and di­rect­ed them not to al­low pa­trons to dine in the es­tab­lish­ments.

The re­duced open­ing hours is one mea­sure the Gov­ern­ment is us­ing to re­duce the chances of spread­ing COVID-19.

“Not al­low­ing cus­tomers to dine has dras­ti­cal­ly af­fect­ed our busi­ness. We are flat out strug­gling to make ends meet. Our land­lords have been work­ing with us but we have oth­er bills to pay. I could not pay my work­ers’ NIS and health sur­charge for two months. When I did, I had to pay penal­ty fees and in­ter­est,” the own­er said.

“If the sit­u­a­tion does not change. We will have to close as we have more debts than in­come.”

She feels the on­ly way to sur­vive is for the Gov­ern­ment to in­crease the num­ber of hours bars can open.

She sug­gest­ed mak­ing all eat­ing es­tab­lish­ments “COVID ready with all safe­ty pre­cau­tions in place.”

“Many peo­ple do not want to buy a drink and have it on the road­side. They want to sit and en­joy it,” she said.

“Peo­ple don’t want to buy and go. They want to sit and so­cialise, even if they have to sit six feet apart from oth­er peo­ple. Peo­ple are strug­gling to re­lieve their ten­sions be­cause of COVID. The bar can re­lieve that,” she added.

She said she strug­gled to make ends meet when the bars were com­plete­ly shut down.

“I am so glad I had a boss who de­liv­ered gro­ceries to all her em­ploy­ees dur­ing that time. She made sure that we could have eat­en. She did all the nec­es­sary forms so we could get the gov­ern­ment’s grants. For that, I am very grate­ful.”

Man­ag­er of Over­hang, Steve Davis, de­liv­ered the food­stuff.

He said he too was hav­ing a hard time as he saw his sis­ter’s busi­ness “on the brink.”

“Be­fore COVID we were not rich, but we did well. Now, we are strug­gling to sur­vive. We have lost many cus­tomers. We may lose more work­ers if this sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ues,” Davis said.