The managing partner and beverage director of Westside Hospitality speaks candidly about the profound effect social distancing restrictions have had on the F&B industry—and why he's not giving up just yet
With the daily press conferences, speculation on what the government may do,and the constantly changing parameters of policy, it’s been hard to gather my thoughts on our current lockdown; however, the overall sense of anxiety and depression among members of the F&B industry is hard to ignore. So many peers have noted that this time feels the toughest and, at least for us financially, it definitely has been. Watching the rest of the world moving on only just heightens the frustrations. Even Chief Executive Carrie Lam had to finally admit that she has "a very strong feeling that people’s tolerance is fading. I have a very good [feeling] that some of our financial institutions are losing patience about the isolated status of Hong Kong.”
For so many, the dream of Hong Kong is finished—we’ve had over 50,000 departures in just the first half of March. People are citing the ever-moving goalposts, the lack of clarity, fear of isolation, the loss of physical and mental health as their final reason to abandon ship. There is an overwhelming sense of hopelessness; but to borrow from DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street, “I’m not leaving…I’m not f**king leaving!”
I first came to Hong Kong 15 years ago through an international business course and, like so many others, I was immediately awestruck; here was a city unlike any other in the world. Here, people ate noodles at street stalls in the alleys of towering office buildings where countless dollars flowed through every second. The city that existed in my imagination from Wong Kar-Wai movies, the smoke of cigarettes flowing past neon signs was suddenly real. So was the hangover after my first night out in Lan Kwai Fong.
The loss of that Hong Kong in our imaginations is what seems to hurt the most—we know it could be better. We swear, just a couple of months ago, it was within our grasp. All that time spent in lockdowns, separation from our families, the constant scanning of QR codes, talking to our friends through plastic barriers, the limited hours, the quarantines—it finally seemed like maybe it was worth it, after all. But all it brought was a false sense of security, bought by the strictest border controls, by so much economic loss, and all that time bought was squandered when we didn’t make vaccinations the game plan.
When a cracked pipe is leaking behind the bar, you grab what you can to slow down the leak: wrap duct tape around it, maybe throw a bucket under it for the night. But you also need to call the plumber to eventually replace it, otherwise you’re just treating the symptoms and not the root issue. By continuing to base strategies around social measures and not getting people vaccinated, we’ve been relying on just dumping out the bucket when it’s full of water, and wasted all the time the social measures have bought us to implement a permanent solution.
Now, a study from HKU shows that Hong Kong’s ban on dining in after 6pm has had next to no effect on slowing down the transmission of Covid-19 during the third and fourth waves of the pandemic. It’s disheartening to learn that the costs we were forced to bear amounted to little more than performative policy. The food and beverage industry faces the highest unemployment rates and according to Simon Wong, the Hong Kong Federation of Restaurants & Related Trades chair, businesses were left with 20 to 30 per cent of normal revenue after the 6pm ban. It only takes a quick stroll through your favourite neighbourhood to see how many of us have been forced to close our doors—livelihoods and dreams disappearing...and for what?
The loss of that Hong Kong in our imaginations is what seems to hurt the most—we know it could be better.
Of course, we can’t ignore the incredible tragedy that this wave has brought: Hong Kong faces the highest death rate in the world, rendering all our collective sacrifices for the past two years seemingly in vain. What angers me the most is how many of those deaths feel like they could have been prevented if our government had focused on getting the population vaccinated instead of focusing on more and more suppressive measures. I’m not arguing that they didn’t work at keeping the virus at bay, but the end game was going to be the vaccine, not keeping Hong Kong isolated from the rest of the world for eternity. It was bound to fail, especially with the high transmission rates of Omicron.
The numbers tell us what we should have already known from looking at the data from around the world. Over 70 per cent of those who died were unvaccinated, and of those who died after getting at least one dose of any vaccine, almost 87 per cent had received Sinovac’s shot. We’ve always known that Covid-19 disproportionately affects the elderly, and yet Hong Kong has one of the lowest rates of vaccination among the most at risk. And why would the case be any different based on the incentives (or lack thereof) put into place?
Even then, it was F&B establishments that bore the responsibility early: needing to require staff to get the jab to increase business hours or capacity, passing the conflicts to our industry when there should have been clear directives from the government.
It could have gone so differently. One only needs to look to other countries who have had great success in the beginning of the pandemic, and then prioritised vaccinations, to see what could have been. New Zealand and South Korea also have huge spikes in infections due to Omicron, and yet, their hospitals and public facilities are not overwhelmed, and their death rates are among the lowest in the world. South Korea has recorded more than 600,000 new infections in a day, and yet it has a fatality rate of 0.14 per cent. (Meanwhile, according to the Financial Times, Hong Kong faces a fatality rate of over 5 per cent.) There, more than 90 per cent of those aged 60 and above had already completed the third vaccination by the time they got hit with Omicron, and the results speak for themselves.
And F&B isn’t the only industry reeling from these social measures. Gyms have been unable to operate and, just a couple days ago, one of the largest fitness chains in Hong Kong announced their closure—along with a few popular independent outlets. Beauty salon workers aren’t even eligible for benefits because apparently, they haven’t been closed long enough to qualify. And the list continues.
As grey as everything seems however, I can’t seem to shake that dream of Hong Kong—and so many of us await the day we can welcome in guests and see their smiling faces. After all, that’s what drew us into hospitality in the first place and kept us going for all these years. The history of Hong Kong has been one of constant change, and each time it marched on stronger because there has been the underlying belief that this city is special. Maybe we’re crazy to still believe after all this turmoil that there are better times ahead, and that it’s going to be that moment when you order dinner at your favorite restaurant or drinks at your local bar that you’ll know everything is ok, but what else can we do but cling onto that hope? There will inevitably be a new “normal”, but when has that not always been the case in Hong Kong? And we’ll be here to help figure it out, ready with a shot of soju if you need it.
