Can’t you eat at the restaurant if you upgrade the 3rd level? … Food Service Industry “Lunch Concerns”

[한국금융신문 유선희 기자] When it emerged that the government was considering a plan to allow only restaurant packing and delivery when the social distancing step was raised, the foodservice industry began to protest. At the current distance stage 2.5, the restaurant can be open until 9pm, and after that, only packing and delivery is possible. Under current guidelines, standards for restaurant operations remain unchanged even in the third stage, but some experts say business regulations for high-risk restaurants should be strengthened.

On the 18th, the Korea Food Service Federation issued a statement, saying: “If the existing three-step guidelines are followed, the restaurant can generally operate on the condition that there is one customer for every 8㎡ of the serving area. the facilities until 9 pm “For that reason, the logic that eating in restaurants should be completely prohibited when moving to the third level is unfounded.”

“In the restaurant industry in general, the Korean food industry accounted for 313.3562, or 44.23%. Among them, the Korean food industry accounted for 60.14% and more than 80% belonged to the small food industry. food services “. It is clear that it will lead to the worst drop in sales in the future if the company is closed completely and only delivery is possible thanks to a measure according to the level of improvement.

In particular, he argued that if only packaging and delivery were possible, the worst drop in sales could occur and the damage to small Korean restaurants could be significant. According to the Statistics Korea Food Service Management Survey, the Korean food industry relied on the fact that there was a high dependence on meals and on-site delivery (5.7%) and packaged meals (11.4 %) were not large.

The group said, “Another concern is lunch obstacles for office workers in social life,” and said: “While delivery and convenience stores will take care of a certain portion, most workers have problems. to solve lunch. ”

The Korean Federation of Food Service Industries (KFDA) demanded intensive support, such as the third emergency disaster grant for small business owners, the expansion of emergency loans for small business owners, direct rental support and stopping the collection of interest on small business loans by financial institutions.

Reporter Yu Sun-hee [email protected]