Businesses look forward with hope

AFTER a challenging start to the year, Ballarat’s business community is finally beginning to splutter back to life just in time for the summer holidays.

One of Sturt Street’s central restaurant offerings, Europa Café is among the many CBD businesses happy to welcome customers and tourists back through its doors.

Owner Kath Hotchin said as soon as the restrictions loosened and they could have people back inside, they eagerly restarted in-person trading.

“Everyone’s happy and excited to be back and being able to sit down and drink out of real glass and have food not on paper has been really good,” she said.

“We’re making sure we’re sanitising everything, menus are laminated now, QR code to do the contact tracing and license checks now as well.

“We’re really excited to have tourists and people from Melbourne back because that’s major for Ballarat.”

Although the much-loved café is open once again, Ms Hotchin said as a result of the lockdown period, there’s a few operational and structural changes now in place.

“We have been seven days for 20 years and we have just reduced that to five days, Wednesday to Sunday, which is a better lifestyle for our chefs, less pressure for me as an employer,” she said.

“We’ve been able to realise what works better for us rather than what people think we should be doing which is a good thing.

“We’re just trying to find different ways to support our suppliers and producers throughout this time like with the little larder set up we’ve done to showcase local produce and products.”

While it’s exciting to re-start the hospitality and tourism industry, Commerce Ballarat’s board chair Nick Thurlbeck said to protect the re-found freedom business owners need to be prepared with a COVID-safe plan.

“They need to understand clearly the patron caps, the number of visitors allowed in their premises and outside and ensure they’re well educated, set up and actions in place to be able to meet their COVID-safe plans,” he said.

“Business owners need to be mindful that we can expect an increase in out of town visitors.

“We need to ensure that they have a COVID-safe plan in place and they fully understand the rules and regulations that are in place so that they can operate their businesses safely.”

In addition to these industries, Ballarat residents are also beginning to make use of recreation and sporting facilities as the restrictions ease further.

Mr Thurlbeck up beat that gyms could start welcoming their members back.

“They have gone a long time without being able to operate their businesses so it’s great news,” he said.

“Similar to many other businesses in regional Victoria, they will need to ensure they have adopted and implemented a COVID-safe plan and are aware of the restrictions still in place around how many people can attend.”

On behalf of the city’s diverse business community, Mr Thurlbeck said Commerce Ballarat and its members are looking forward to being able to host an increase in regional and metropolitan visitors.

“Commerce Ballarat is incredibly proud of Ballarat businesses and the people in Ballarat for being able to get to a point where we can start welcoming visitors from other regions into our city.”

“The Ballarat economy relies very heavily on visitors to the region. We think it’s just a fantastic time that we can commence welcoming Melburnians back into our town in a COVID-safe manner.”