Worries brewing at region’s cafés
"The future is looking a lot brighter than I expected it to, but it's still not as brilliant as I would have hoped."
Cafe owners and workers across the region have spoken of hope, but also caution as their businesses continue to operate under the current coronavirus restrictions.
Smaller businesses such as cafes and sandwich shops have had to deal with more limited footfall as offices and other places of work have stayed closed during the pandemic.
Esme Stackhouse, director and manager of Lindy Lou's cafe in Wolverhampton, said she had definitely noticed less people walking past the cafe on Victoria Street.
She said: "I think footfall's been lessened throughout the city and it's one thing that's obvious every day when we go outside and see how many people are around.
"There's definitely a lot less people, be it through lack of confidence or through having no money due to redundancy or furlough."
Despite less people heading into Wolverhampton city centre, Esme also said that the cafe had been able to continue running and building up its customer base.
She said: "It's sustainable at the moment as we are offering 25 percent discounts on Monday and Tuesday, plus a VIP discount for regulars on Thursdays, and people are continuing to come in.
"The future is going to be interesting and, hopefully, it'll start to build up and, hopefully, we can avoid any more lockdowns as they would be completely disastrous for us.
"Hopefully, we can start to build up and be back to some sort of normal in about a years time."
Other cafes around the region spoke of their own concerns for their businesses going forward.
Ann Sambrook, manager of Gardenia cafe in Walsall, said business was slow after reopening and spoke about a decreasing footfall in general in the town.
Worry
She said: "We were doing a lot of takeaway-only at the beginning, but found that most of our customers are elderly people who don't do takeaway, but want to come in, sit down and socialise.
"We've found, along with a cafe down the road, that footfall has been steadily down over the last 18 months, but the pandemic definitely accelerated that.
"We do get a steady footfall through the cafe, with people who are out shopping, but the high street is not what it used to be and there just aren't enough people passing through."
At the Village Cafe in Gornalwood, staff member Linda Bullock said she wasn't certain about the future of the cafe under the present circumstances.
She said: "The cafe has been hit financially by the pandemic and there's a lot of worry about whether we can go on as we are.
"We're hoping that things are able to pick up before they get worse and we have to lockdown again as that could end things.
"We get, on average, about 40 and 50 people a day, but we definitely need more people in, although we're not sure how to get more in.
"We have to hope things will get better and better and not have a second wave."
