A Plymouth restaurateur is keeping his top-rated eatery open during the second lockdown by changing it to a takeaway and delivery business after launching his own app.
Edmond Davari’s Persian cuisine Toot restaurant, rated Plymouth’s top Middle Eastern food experience on TipAdvisor, closed to sit-in customers ahead of the November 5 lockdown but he is keeping staff on and staying in business by offering take-home meals for the first time.
He said it was vital he adapted his business after the coronavirus pandemic hit trade and caused Toot’s outside catering sister company to lose 200 bookings during 2020, with no events scheduled for this Christmas or even 2021.
So Mr Davari has come up with a way to “pivot” his business, as the Government has encouraged entrepreneurs to do, and will operate seven nights a week as a takeaway.
He is working with an app developer so customers can order from him direct, and will also deliver via his own staff and by using JustEat. Customers can also collect pre-ordered dishes, and can even phone in and place their order.
Mr Davari is calling his new concept TV Dinners, in homage to the US habit of eating a meal in front of the flat screen. And to mark World Vegan Month, Toot is offering vegan main dishes at £5 per dish throughout November 2020, delivery or collection.
“You can order your TV Dinner and it will be quality, restaurant food, but with prices that reflect it is a takeaway and not a sit-down meal,” Mr Davari said. “It’s about having to adapt if you want to survive. I never thought I’d do takeaways from a restaurant, but we have to do it, we need to provide the staff with hours. And if you are not active you disappear from the scene.”
It all comes just weeks after Mr Devari opened a covered, but open air terrace space at his Mayflower Street restaurant. The roof-top hookah, or shisha, terrace was a £30,000 investment designed to give Toot somewhere for diners to try the exotic tobacco pipe, and be able to dine socially distanced in a fresh air environment.
But that has now had to close, and Mr Davari is injecting his energies into his new business model and said: “We have an app for the restaurant, you can order though it and we have drivers in place and will be promoting JustEat.”
Mr Davari said Toot had recovered well from the March to July lockdown, buoyed by the Eat Out to Help Out scheme in August.
But he is now worried about the future, not just for himself but for all hospitality businesses, with Christmas bookings non-existent and “so much uncertainty”.
But he is not sorry to see the collapse of national casual dining chains, and the loss of some restaurants – including Bella Italia, Las Iguanas, and Pizza Hut outlets – in Plymouth.
“We have seen how the national chains are collapsing,” he said. “But I’m not sorry to see them go, they were all about money, not hospitality. They could not deal with one month of lockdown. This (Toot) is my restaurant, my home, it’s about hospitality.”
He said Plymouth has seen some new independent food businesses launch since July and hopes they will be sustainable, adding: “People should be encouraged to use local businesses. And my advice to them is not to give up, and be positive.”
And he speaks from experience, having lost a Plymouth restaurant empire when his four Sutton Harbour establishments went into liquidation in 2013.
But he bounced back then and is determined to weather the Covid crisis, but said he outside catering industry “fell through the cracks” of the Government’s support packages.
“I have already lost 200 weddings and festivals; a year’s business, all gone,” he said. “It would have been my best year. And I have nothing, zero, for next year. But this is not the end, this is a blip.”
But he worries that people will be less stringent about the rules during Lockdown 2.0 and said: “Everyone took lockdown seriously last time, but this time there has been so many confusing messages I think some people will ignore it. And if they (the Government) wanted a serious lockdown they shouldn’t have kids in school. I think the lockdown will be extended. There is no way we can control this. But this time next year we will be back to normal.”
