The Lar restaurant in central Bilbao, northern Spain, has been closed since March 14, when the state of alarm decreed by the Spanish government began because of the coronavirus pandemic. The decree limited circulation and ordered the closing of non-essential businesses in the whole country. Since then, the state of alarm has been extended three more times.
The Lar stopped receiving any income. After more than a month and a half, Miguel Justo, one of its owners and the chef, did not see many ways out to reopen: he had applied an ERTE to his workers (employment regulation files; the employees remain unemployed only during the crisis), the mortgage payments for the premises were coming in, he had to pay his suppliers all the same. They had only expenses and no profits.
The Lar restaurant offers traditional Basque food, especially seafood and seasonal products, which in Spain is called “market cuisine”. Signature cuisine. This is how an EFE piece published in the newspaper Deia describes the restaurant. A similar description is on websites such as Trip Advisor or Hermeneus.
Laura Rubio — Miguel Justo’s wife — and himself founded the Lar in 2005. The place has six tables and six workers, now in temporary suspension of their jobs.
At the end of April, Miguel Justo came up with the idea of sending a WhatsApp message to his regular customers, some 80 contacts, to offer them prepaid menu vouchers: five menus at 40 euros each; 10 menus at 30 euros each. At today’s exchange rate, this is about 43 and 32 dollars. Justo’s proposal was that customers pay for the vouchers now –through the bizum application or by bank transfer– to enjoy them later, when the restaurant reopens.
As Luis Gómez writes for El Correo, the response was unexpected for Justo. Within a week 70 people had bought the bonds. The contributions amounted to 30,000 euros.
“The response has gone viral, there have been people who have sent it to other people, people who have made money for me and I didn’t even know who it was; it was a spectacular thing,” Justo told EFE.
“What the banks and the public administration have not done, friends and clients have had to do,” said the chef to Luis Gomez. Miguel Justo and Laura Rubio had made the arrangements to apply for loans and grants from the regional government, but they did not qualify. They were on the verge of bankruptcy, according to the El Correo piece.
“We were told that we did not qualify for these loans. Not a single euro came from any public administration or source of income, and bills from suppliers and mortgage payments on the house and restaurant kept coming in, so we thought we had to do something,” Justo added to EFE.
As a small, signature restaurant with regular customers, their diners are like family.
“Unlike other restaurants, in mine the tables are not numbered but named; Antonio’s table, Iñaki’s table,” Miguel Justo said to the Ser radio program La Ventana. The massive response from its customers, Justo added, “has been the response of a small family but with very great people.”
According to EFE, the Lar’s owners did not want to open the restaurant to prepare meals for delivery, as the Spanish government had recently allowed. “Being a restaurant that specializes in market and signature cuisine, it is very difficult to make it to go. I don’t know how I would be able to take the dishes to the homes.”
The proceeds from the prepaid vouchers will allow Justo and Rubio to return to their activity “with more peace of mind,” according to EFE.
In Spain, the reopening of the activities is taking place in phases, depending on the health situation in each autonomous community. It goes from phase 0 (taking walks and doing sports by age group and time zone, using hairdressers by appointment, picking up takeaways at restaurants that offer this service) to phase 4, which the government estimates will be reached by June 22.
Only the islands of La Graciosa, El Hierro and La Gomera, in the Canary Islands, and Formentera in the Balearic Islands, are already in phase 1 since May 4, due to their low level of infection of the coronavirus. This means that they can now hold meetings of up to 10 people, their businesses can operate with a capacity of up to 30%, they can open up outdoor sports facilities, and the terraces, a classic of spring and summer in Spain, can be activated: this means that bars and restaurants can only open the tables outside their premises and with 50% of them, following the safety distances.
Most other regions of the country –including the Basque Country, where the Lar restaurant is located– could enter phase 1 from Monday 11 May, with the approval of the Ministry of Health, which will notify them if they can do so before the weekend. Due to the state of alarm, the Health Ministry has control of these decisions. For the time being, Catalonia, Madrid, Castile-La Mancha are the autonomous communities that have the most difficult to advance from phase 0.
According to the “de-escalation” plan presented by the Spanish Executive on April 28th, it will be towards phase two, estimated to be activated by the end of May, when bars and restaurants like Lar will be able to return to full operation — terraces and their interior space — but with a capacity of 30% and hygiene and distance measures.
But from May 11, Laura Rubio and Miguel Justo’s restaurant could open the terrace. “Initially, if they allow us to use the two tables that have sufficient separation to respect personal safety distance. If they don’t let me open like this, I’ll have to wait until the following week,” he told EFE.
Although it will not be entirely profitable, for Justo to serve at the tables outside will be a psychological incentive, “to start moving the business and start giving back what we have been given and to feel that you are alive again. It’s not good psychologically to continue like this because people can’t imagine what it’s like to be stuck at home for two months when you’re in an activity like the hotel business.”