Please forgive my flippant heading to this post.
But, as I explained in ‘The Age’ on Monday (online) https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/push-to-make-us-eat-outdoors-is-ridiculous-20200915-p55vro.html and yesterday (in print), eating at restaurants outdoors is a terrible idea. Victorian premier Daniel Andrews and Melbourne’s lord mayor Sally Capp are busting to promote it, and in this post I want to add to my ‘Age’ comments.
In the 9 media, I failed to mention Melbourne’s fickle weather. When we can have sun in the morning followed by several centimetres of hail at lunchtime, Melbourne can hardly be seen to be geographically ideal for outdoor dining. I concede that many great eating-out cities have radical weather. But do they have as changeable climates?
A barista who runs what sounds like a kind of CBD coffee cart emailed me yesterday in anguish. He has to load up in the lanes and small streets of Melbourne. What if they’re blocked with restaurant tables and chairs, preventing him from continuing his business? he asked. Sorry, mate, you can’t take your van up there. I sympathise, and there must be hundreds of small businesses in a similar situation.
In busy main streets, where are restaurants and cafes going to find the space to set up planter boxes, screens and parasols? I suspect that many of them — perhaps most — will be unable to requisition any suitable areas for outdoor dining. And, if they’re small — places with 10 and fewer seats — they get no grants from the state government t help them to do it. (The big boys get the most money to set up their outdoor facilities, of course.)
Where has the push for outdoor dining originated? May I speculate that it’s a diversion? With so much bad press coming out of the hotel-quarantine inquiry, the inevitable demise of Mr Andrews and his government, the fumbling by a range of inept bureaucrats, the refusal to let the army handle hotel quarantine, the premier and his government are down and almost out. Any cool idea, however stupid, might diminish the heat, they hope.
And who has been lobbying the Andrews government about outdoor dining? I’d love to know. We know that the premier has complimented Ms Capp for her inputs and advice on resurrecting Melbourne. But who else has been blowing in Mr Andrews’s ear? The casino? The big restaurateurs? The best-known ones? No one has said.
And a further speculation: are we being softened up through the promotion of outdoor eating for even tougher restrictions on its indoor counterpart?