Ramsbottom restaurant Levanter has been forced to close its bar and dining room, citing the ongoing cost of living crisis. Its main restaurant premises will remain open, but owners are planning to downsize their operation until the summer.
In a tweet to followers, owners Joe and Fiona Botham said: “We've had to take the hard decision to hibernate the Smithy St side of Ramsbottom - the Bar & the Comedor Dining Room, for the foreseeable future. We're hopeful this will just be for the quieter Winter months & we can fire it up again once the warmer weather kicks in for Spring/Summer & demand for the outside tables on Square St kicks in too.
“We've tried everything possible to avoid this scenario - but you know the script I'm sure the overall Cost Of Living & Cost of Doing Business situation, both (understandably) have seriously reduced demand & simultaneously led to huge rises in our costs from every angle - but undoubtedly & most seriously the UNTENABLE hike in energy prices.
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“We could probably just about handle everything else but that's the killer blow. It's impossible to keep all our doors open for now.” The owners opened up the additional bar and dining room on Smithy Street a few years back, adjacent to the main restaurant space on Square Street.
Square Street remains open from 5pm on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and from 12pm from Friday and over the weekends. They added: “We're determined to keep on keeping on.”
Just last week, the restaurant owners posted to Twitter the horrendous increase in their own domestic energy costs. “£545 for our domestic dual fuel energy bill for one month Nov-Dec (includes that very cold snap & £66 govt help) Don’t even ask me about the rise for the biz bills. Untenable. How on earth are people/families on pre-payment coping? JFC,” they said.
They then added ‘my Ramsbottom business energy numbers are off the scale - up from circa £18k/yr to £55k/yr’, tagging in Labour leader Kier Starmer, Angela Rayner, Rishi Sunak and the official 10 Downing Street account.
The concern over such huge increases is reverberating across the hospitality industry. Speaking to the Manchester Evening News last week, David Fox, owner of the Tampopo restaurants, revealed that one of his sites has gone from £30,000 a year in energy bills to £90,000.
He added that if the government decides to halve previously announced relief packages to help with energy bill, this could rise to £120,000 per year. The Times revealed that the government is planning to slash the amount being given to businesses.
The Manchester Evening News contacted the Treasury for comment, but has not received a reply.
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