A sigh of relief for all the people living in Chandigarh. : The district magistrate (DM) has allowed restaurants and food joints in Mohali to be open till 9 pm. Restaurants can operate with 50% occupancy of 50 guests whichever is lower. The restaurants can only serve liquor if they have valid permission from the excise department. The bars won’t be opening as of now.
The notification said-Restaurants in hotels are allowed to serve food, including buffet meals up to 50% of their seating capacity or 50 guests whichever is less. The restaurants would also be open to persons other than hotel guests but timings for both hotel guests as well as persons from outside would be till 9 pm.
Gurmeet Singh Khalsa, the owner of a restaurant in Phase V, said “The government has allowed us to open till 9pm and this may bring in customers. Otherwise, we were losing 85% of business daily due to lockdown. But still, we are not getting customers as all tables are empty. Earlier, we used to Rs 50,000 business daily but for the past three months, we do not get sales of even Rs 10,000.”
Restaurant believe that people are still scared of eating out but they hope that things will return to normal.