Life getting back to normal?

Shops, pubs and restaurants opening up again, we hope!

As I write this we don’t know whether we will be able to stick to the Prime Minister’s roadmap to ease the country out of lockdown, but it’s all looking pretty positive. All being well, all the shops will be allowed to be open again, as of Monday 12 April, along with the hairdressers and beauty parlours, gyms and spas. Pubs and restaurants will be allowed to serve food and drink outside. From Monday 17 May they will be able to serve food indoors and pubs will be proper pubs again. Museums, theatres, cinemas and children’s play areas will be open.

MAYFEST

Simon Randall, who runs the Headliners Comedy Club in Chiswick, says performers can’t wait to be on stage again. He’s organised a Mayfest programme over the last two weekends of May – eight standup comedians each night on Friday, Saturday and Sunday of 21-23rd and 28th-30th May. Many of the comedians have been performing at the club for years – Jeff Innocent, Paul Tonkinson, John Moloney, Arthur Smith. Top class performers who you’d pay considerably more to see in the West End. Headliners celebrates its 20th anniversary this year and is lucky to have made it this far. Simon earned not a penny last year, as he was one of those, as a freelance sole trader who works from home, who didn’t qualify for any of the financial assistance available. People don’t usually book stand-up comedy much in advance, he says, but the response when he sent out a mailshot in March was absolutely incredible: “People are desperate to go out and to get something booked up so that they have something to look forward to”.

15 MINUTE ECONOMY

Things are looking up for shops and restaurants too. High streets have been dying over the last decade, with empty premises appearing like gaps in a seven year old’s teeth. It’s depressing to walk past ugly, deserted shops and bad for the businesses on either side. In a prosperous High street the shops help each other. You think ‘I’ll just nip in for a loaf of bread, and while I’m at it I’ll pick up some batteries’. Then you notice a dress in a shop window, or a book or something else you don’t strictly need. Hit by high rents and business rates and the impact of the internet, High streets have suffered, but trading conditions have changed in the past year. Rents have been much more competitive, business rates have been waived and people have reconnected with their local shops. Partly because people have been working at home, travelling far less and going out for walks, the concept of the 15 minute economy has gained ground - the idea that you should be able to get everything you need within a 15 minute walk of where you live. But partly also because there has been a resurgence in the idea of the importance of community and a realisation that the local economy won’t survive unless we buy things locally. Hush Hush is a ‘pop-up’ which took premises on Chiswick High Rd in August 2020 selling freshly prepared salads, filo pastries and coffee. They’ve remained open since and manager Alain says they are now looking for a long-term lease. Origin 40 opened the doors of its Chiswick shop in July 2020, selling products which contain cannabis extract. They too opened on a short-term lease and are planning to stay. Managing Director Marcus Fox says when they opened their first shop in central London their customers were mainly people with long-term medical conditions looking for pain relief. During the pandemic that switched to customers mainly wanting help with their stress and anxiety and inability to sleep.

Hush Hush Origin 40

“YEAR OF HELL”

This past year has been really tough on retailers and those offering hospitality and other services. Dino Kastrati, who opened his family run Italian restaurant in Devonshire Rd in Chiswick in 2019, describes 2020 as “the year from hell”. They have only been able to be open fully for two months and despite business grants, the holiday in business rates and furlough support payments, he says they have really struggled to survive. Even businesses like Snappy Snaps and Foster Books which have been in Chiswick High Rd for decades have found it exceedingly tough. John Fitzgerald, manager of Snappy Snaps says they’ve

CONFIDENCE FOR THE FUTURE

Andy Sands, who runs Chiswick Cameras, has also been operating a click and collect service and selling equipment online. He says his takings are down 50 – 60% on the previous year. But he hopes that now, people who are still in work will have money in their pockets which they haven’t been able to spend on holidays or meals out, and they will spend it on their hobbies. been operating a click and collect service during lockdown as much as anything to provide a service to loyal customers and remind people that they’re there. They have not made a profit. During the first lockdown Stephen Foster said: “We did nothing at all at first, but when things settled down we started getting a few orders. It has been a logistical nightmare because Royal Mail has been an absolute mess”. He too has rearranged his shop for social distancing and switched to doing most of his business online. But it’s not a patch on the trade he normally does from people coming into the shop and browsing and finding something they want spontaneously.

There’s an air of confidence about the retail and hospitality market, despite everything. Jeremy Day, Commercial Director of property agents Whitman & Co, says prospects are good, with hardly any gaps currently in Chiswick High Rd. The new, incoming businesses he is currently dealing with are all taking long term lets, he says, which bodes well for the future.

Foster Books Casa Dino