"Those areas, where restaurants are located look like a cemetery," Kote Gabrichidze, the founder of the Restaurant Association, told Business Morning.
As he pointed out, restaurants are mostly closed and they only work on weekends, which puts the business in a difficult position. According to him, restaurants cannot pay leasing fees.
"A lot of restaurants were kicked out by the landlord, as the tenants obviously could not pay the rental fee," he said.
Kote Gabrichidze deeply believes that what is happening in their sector today is the fault of specific individuals.
"The government and epidemiologists have the main fault in what is happening in our field today. In fact, it has become a major battleground for the epidemic”, - said the founder of the Restaurant Association.
Gabrichidze also touched upon the issue of staff outflow from the sector and explained that if before one particular restaurant had 15 employees, now this number was reduced to 5.
"There is an outflow of staff from this field, you will not find a cleaner, a cook and a waiter. Most of them left for abroad or started to work in other sectors. The restaurant business has a catastrophic image, it is considered as one of the most unstable. An employee with a salary of GEL 1,500 goes and works in a completely different sector for GEL 500, because the main thing for him is a sense of stability," said Kote Gabrichidze.
