Government must help crisis-hit restaurants
A packaging firm has developed a new method of helping restaurants to stay in business as they fight the effects of the Coronavirus on the UK’s ailing restaurant and hospitality industry.
Xpress Labels Ltd of Aylesbury is ramping up production of a home delivery kit to enable takeaways & restaurants to produce meals for delivery and safe collection, thus saving tens of thousands of at-risk jobs. Reassuring the public that the food they receive has been prepared and sealed with all safety precautions at the forefront of the preparers mind.
But the firm needs ministers to step in to enable it to increase capacity to meet unprecedented demand from UK restaurant & delivery sector which are struggling to stay in business by transitioning from sit-down dining to food-to-go.
Company Chairman John Clark says:
“Most eateries will typically offer one or two meals a night in plastic containers to guests who are too full to finish their sit-down dinners this isn’t a possibility anymore so they need to adapt.
“But it is another thing entirely to provide hundreds of meals a night as takeout, which is what restaurants need to do if they are to stay afloat and continue to pay their staff.
“Customers will also worry about their food being infected with the virus which it cannot. So home delivery outlets must adopt new procedures and packaging to prove all precautions have been taken with their food for their customers peace of mind.
“Our solution is a starter pack with a series of generic, tamper-evident labels to enable food to be parcelled up quickly and safely in a kitchen and sent to a customer. The kit includes a how-to-do-it guide to ensure the takeout arrives in a hygienic condition.”
Mr Clark explains this issue is just one aspect of the huge challenge the country faces as the restaurant and hospitality industry effectively re-tools its premises and re-shapes its business models to cope with the massive impacts of the Coronavirus.
“Big outlets like McDonalds spend years developing exactly the right kind of packaging but ordinary restaurants do not have access to that kind of product or expertise and certainly not quickly. Now McDonalds is temporarily closing, providing food supplies to the vulnerable may well lie with these smaller outlets.
“So my team have spent the last few days designing an off-the-shelf solution to provide to the UK’s battered restaurants.
“Our existing suppliers are working around the clock to meet the challenge of supplying material, but we need to find new partners to ramp up production quickly.
“I hope the government will intervene to help us. This is a small but vital step in allowing British restaurants to change their business models.”
Mr Clark explains the complex problem in a simple way. “You can’t make bricks without straw and in lock-down Britain you can’t do takeout without proving your food is absolutely safe and virus-free.
“Xpress Labels Ltd have the expertise and the creativity but we need help from government to make this happen – in the same way that ministers have intervened with supermarkets to stop food shortages.”
Mr Clark, of Speen, Buckinghamshire adds: “If we do not take control of this vital element in the supply process, then restaurants are not going to be able to transition to their new business model.
“Our existing suppliers are ready to increase production, but the country is going to need many more of them to help in the months to come. The government must act now to prevent production bottle-necks from strangling these crucial new business initiatives at birth.”