Employees clean and disinfect a restaurant in Beijing's Xicheng district. As dine-in service will resume on Monday in most parts of Beijing, restaurant owners and food vendors across the capital are busily preparing for the end of the ban on dine-in service, which began on May 1. Photo: Li Hao/GT

 

Restaurant owners and food vendors in Beijing are preparing for the end of the ban on dine-in service that began on May 1 due to strict epidemic controls, as the Chinese capital resumes business after the COVID-19 outbreak was largely brought under control.

At a regular press conference for epidemic control on Sunday, Liu Xiaofeng, deputy director of the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said that from midnight Saturday to 15:00 pm on Sunday, there were no positive cases outside the quarantine areas, and epidemic control had achieved phased results.

Dine-in service is due to resume on Monday except for Fengtai District and some parts of northern Changping District.

Hotpot chain Haidilao told the Global Times on Sunday that it is prepared for the resumption of dine-in service. It has been offering meals through take-out and pick-up services.

"I'm very glad to see the news. Our store has received a lot of inquiries from customers who want to come to Haidilao to eat the first hot pot after dine-in services resume," Zhang Qiuxia, manager of a Haidilao branch store in Mudanyuan, Haidian District, said on Sunday.

Some customers said that they hoped Haidilao would open early on Monday, but the chain said it still has much work to do -- cleaning and disinfection of all tableware and other sanitation and inspection work, including staffers' health conditions.

Another large restaurant chain that didn't want to be identified told the Global Times that there would not be much preparation to do since it had been offering food delivery and pick-up services. It said that there had been some temporary staff shortages at some of its stores due to quarantine measures in some parts of Beijing.

"There could be some requirements such as eating at separated tables and limiting traffic flows," the person said.

A purchasing manager at a Japanese restaurant in Beijing told the Global Times on Sunday that while it is looking forward to the resumption, it won't stock up on food since Japanese restaurants are not as busy as those serving Chinese food, and its business will take some time to recover.

A Chongqing hotpot restaurant in Chaoyang district said that the menu will be the same as the one offered by the delivery service it has been providing. The restaurant won't accept reservations at the moment, as it expects to be busy once it reopens.

Sun Wei, a pork vendor in Beijing's Xinfadi wholesale market, told the Global Times on Sunday that the halt of dine-in service for restaurants led to a drop of one-third of his sales.

"So far, there has not been a significant increase in orders from restaurants since the news just came out, but we are ready to meet demand and hopefully make up for the losses," he said.