COVID-19 impacts: UAE’s restaurant businesses start shutting down
Restaurant businesses in the UAE are starting to put up ‘For Sale’ signs, with their owners realizing there is no escape from the destruction set off by the COVID-19 pandemic. Licenses and even the equipment and furniture are being offered at steep discounts in hopes that someone out there will buy them.
Only government-owned locations have been given rent deferrals or rent-free for up to three months. But the vast majority of landlords have not offered any such break. It will accelerate the destruction of the F&B industry.
In Dubai, of the 11,000 outlets registered as F&B, anywhere between 40-50 per cent are unlikely to remain in business over the next few months, according to multiple industry sources. As of now, less than 30 per cent of UAE’s F&B outlets have re-opened, the majority of them being at the malls. But these openings have come with strict limits.
For many of these people in the F&B business its not the safety guidelines that are proving to be an issue but the issue at hand is the rent they are to pay to their landlord.