Support Your Local Restaurant

With people being quarantined in their houses and advised to avoid being in places with large crowds, plenty of local businesses are being seriously affected by the lack of customers and visitors, with restaurants being among the most affected.

Restaurants, especially in the city, are normally flooded at lunch time by workers and tourists. But with many companies having their staff work from home and visitors staying away from Stockholm, many restaurants have been having to let some of their staff go when there is no work and they are no longer able to pay for their salaries. Several restaurants have already deemed it necessary to close their doors. Even the few people that are still frequenting their work places and going out, don’t know if the eateries are open.

“We are normally full, but this week we are only two people working at the restaurant because we don’t have customers. The rest of the staff are being kept on hold. Some of the customers we do have said that they didn’t know we were open. I can recommend people to call the restaurant in advance to find out if they’re open, to go and buy takeout food, that would really help us!” Says Miguel Padilla chef at Pastis French Bistro in Gamla Stan

In shopping mall food courts like the one at Heron City, about a 20% of normal sale was registered during the past weekend, when they normally tend to have the highest demand. Restaurants in these locations have their premises running with as few as two people working and barely selling what their salary cost is.

stockholm sweden restaurants — Photo by Henrik Trygg/imagebank.sweden.se

Thousands and thousands of jobs are at stake, and many restaurants will be on the brink of bankruptcy. If people would like to see a lively Stockholm restaurant scene also after this, we should try to support our local restaurants any way we can. Obviously getting takeaway food is a great way but another way could be to buy a gift voucher to be used for later.

It seems like there would be extra demand for home delivery now because of the situation, but you should know that some of the most popular food courier services take a big percentage of the food price, so restaurants may have to make the prices a bit higher on the courier site than what they take at the restaurant. Therefore I can recommend buying directly from the restaurants (if that is possible) to show even more support directly to the restaurants.

Pelle Lydmar Strandvägen 1 grill grilling stockholm — Pelle Lydmar grilling outside Strandvägen 1

Many restaurants are getting creative about how to survive this thing. For example the owner of Strandvägen 1, Pelle Lydmar himself, was out on the terrace barbecuing for lunch; Indian Street Food Co is utilising their food trucks to do home deliveries themselves and quite a few places are offering discounts on takeaway food.

The restaurants are also being extra careful with cleaning with disinfectant and are thinking about things like removing salad buffets where many people would be using the same utensils. And they are also being very strict about workers staying home with the slightest of flu symptoms… Lots of things to think about to make the places as safe as possible.

Here’s a list of only a few of the restaurants across town that are definitely open and standing tall under this crisis, plenty of them are offering discounted prices both for eating in or taking out. Do call your favourite eatery to find out if it’s open and support your local restaurants if you can and help the local economy survive as well as help the workers keep their jobs.

GAMLA STAN:

SÖDERMALM:

VASASTAN: