Service, please!

When the lockdown took hold, our restaurants and food retailers didn’t have a chance to pause for breath. Each of them has been impacted hugely, but there is hope for the future as innovation and imagination start to show a way forward to a new normality

JUSTIN CRACKNELL

The Limeberry Group

Justin Cracknell is a director of The Limeberry Group which includes The New London Restaurant in Chelmsford, a gin bar called the Bottle Bureau also in Chelmsford, The ship Inn at Burnham on Crouch and Limeberry events which would ordinarily host around 120 weddings each year.

‘After Boris Johnson’s announcement that the public should avoid bars and restaurants we were coming up to Mother’s Day, our busiest day of the year,’ says Justin.

‘All the bookings were already starting to drop off. So we decided to close and then the very next day they forced closure on us. It was the hardest week of my life. I remember I was close to tears. I had to go and see all the staff and sat down with them. My main concern was keeping the business going and keeping jobs for them.

‘The staff are so loyal and the whole team is like a small family. I was really concerned about them. I was worried about how they were going to pay their bills. Initially I was going to find a way to pay all their holiday in advance, but on the Friday they announced the furlough scheme. That was a massive weight off my shoulders, but even with that, it seemed like within a week I just saw the business crumble into nothing.’

Since that week, Justin has been working on the business single-handedly.

‘It’s just me doing some maintenance, there’s not even any emails. I’m looking at trying to plan to reopen but until we know when, I can’t even write the menus as we don’t know what produce will be available.’