Prominent Bengaluru Restaurants Has Closed Its Doors Due To Steep Rise In Covid Cases

Tao Terraces, one of Bengaluru's excellent dining establishments also known for good music, closed its doors on Saturday evening after owner Naren Beliappa said that frequent closures, exorbitant rents, unyielding landlords, and government lethargy had left him with no choice but to withdraw for the time being.

The restrictions imposed by the pandemic included night and weekend curfew in Bengaluru, is wreaking havoc on the food and beverage business, which was barely trying to enter in the right track. The night curfew, which was enforced during the second wave in April of last year, was lifted on November 8 after seven months.

Beliappa announced the closure on social media, noting that it has been 10 years. Their most significant problem has been high rental rates, as well as the fact that they are the first to close when limitations are announced and the last to reopen. When they temporarily shuttered their doors in March of last year, none of us could have predicted that Covid would still be around 21 months later. Beliappa made a statement that the city's food and beverage business is on the verge of collapse due to recurrent closures.

Mukesh Tolani, the head of the National Restaurants Association of India (NRAI) Bengaluru chapter and co-founder of popular microbrewery Toit, said they had approached the Excise Department with a request to extend the night curfew to 11.30 p.m. on weekdays instead of 10 p.m.

Restaurants, pubs, and bars have been hit hard by the night curfew, which began at 10 p.m. and has now been extended to the weekend. He noted that their drive to achieve with the Chief Minister and the Excise Commissioner to let them to do business on weekends were futile because to their obsession with the new Covid-19 wave.

Amit Roy of Watson's, a member of the NRAI national committee, stated the F&B industry in Karnataka has been hit hard by recurrent closures since March 2020.

They were required to pay the Excise licence fee in advance, which they have done meticulously despite being entirely shut down for months during the national shutdown in early 2020. They have not requested any concessions from the administration. They were asking for the licence fee to be waived for the months we were closed. The government offers little assistance, and the pressure from landlords to pay rent on time is excruciating.