22
Issue 09
O
WINTER 2020
nly restaurateurs who were running their businesses well and not racking up massive debts prior to Covid-19 will survive. That is just one of the many harsh lessons that restaurant owners can take out of the pandemic, says Max Mqadi, the owner of one of Durban’s most popular restaurants, Max’s Lifestyle. A vocal opponent of how the government has attempted to curtail the spread of Covid-19 through imposing crippling restrictions on the restaurant sector, Mqadi says he did not believe government decisionmakers truly understand what it means to create a business from nothing and then see it undermined by “poor policies”. Max’s Lifestyle started out as just a butchery and shisa nyama in a one-room shack in front of a former taxi rank in 2002 and grew into a swish, A-list eatery offering an authentic
H O S P I TA L I T Y
A life and death FIGHT Max Mqadi is opposed to government’s stiff lockdown measures, and believes poverty is the only winner township experience. In 2016, Max’s Lifestyle was recognised as one of the top 207 restaurants in the world by Condé Nast magazine. It attracted customers from across the country and abroad and
has become a major tourist attraction. Now the restaurant is idling, waiting for a return to normality. The staff of 150, which fed as many families and made an impact on the Umlazi township economy,
has been reduced to just 25. Numbers are down and turnover has dwindled. “When it comes to a restaurant, it is not about selling the food but about selling the experience. Selling alcohol is where restaurant owners make the money to pay the electricity bills and their taxes to government. People come here to eat and then to spend hours drinking and socialising with their friends.” He does not believe first world rules apply in a third world environment. As with other pandemics, such as HIV, Mqadi believes government’s role is to educate people to care for themselves rather than impose stiff regulations. That includes freeing up restaurants to run their establishments professionally and to oversee responsible drinking rather than banning the sale of alcohol and leaving people to go to parties at homes which are not properly policed. “At the moment I am open because I own this complex. If I was renting I wouldn’t be,” he says of the centre which also includes a butchery, car wash and beauty salon. “People support us because they miss their places, but they don’t stay for long because government has taken out the social element. There is nothing we can do but wait and see. I believe the government is letting us down. The problem is coronavirus versus poverty, and poverty is winning,” he says. Mqadi believes there will not be any major changes for the restaurant sector before December, and those that manage to survive that long need to have recovery plans in place. “It’s a life and death fight.”
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