Japanese pub chain offers compensation for restaurants hit by COVID - 19 curbs

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Japanese pub chain offers compensation for restaurants hit by COVID - 19 curbs

Customers have lunch at the yakiniku barbecue restaurant named 'Yakiniku no Watami’, operated by Watami Co. in Tokyo on 17 September 2021. TOKYO, September 23 Reuters - Miki Watanabe, the chief executive of Japanese pub chain Watami, have urgent advice for the next Prime Minister: provide fair compensation for restaurants impacted by the COVID 19 restrictions on eateries.

Yoshihide Suga is himself a politician who spent six years in parliament. Watanabe has a relationship with outgoing prime minister Yoshihide Sagami from his time in politics.

On Sept. 29 the ruling Liberal Democratic Party LDP will nominate a new leader to replace PM Suga since they are already the majority party.

Speaking to Reuters from one of the company's restaurants before that vote, Watanabe's story epitomizes the challenges the new Japanese leader will face to help businesses recover from the pandemic bite.

Last year, Watanabe converted this restaurant from an izakaya-style pub, where small dishes are typically served with alcohol, to a yakiniku style pub where diners grill their food at the table with robots serving meat and other items to cut labour costs.

He will now convert 40% of his 300 outlets into these high-tech barbecue restaurants, which also include using conveyor belts to dispense items by next April.

This is Watami's strategy to better suit consumer tastes and ride out emergency curbs from the government to prevent COVID -19's spread that cut opening hours and banned serving alcohol.

Watanabe has been atypically critical of the government's COVID -19 - curbs on restaurants, a rarity in noisy Japan.

I was frustrated at the government's response to the pandemic, Watanabe said. It is too slow and sloppy. The contenders for LDP leadership have pledged to reduce the pandemic and respond to the pain by rolling out fresh stimulus, but whoever succeeds Suga will face a long battle with COVID - 19, Watanabe said.

Government compensation for businesses impacted by the curbs was too generous for larger firms, but unfair for smaller companies like Watami, making it unbalanced and unfair, he added.

We want the new government to pay fair compensation for the business suspensions in accordance with the size of businesses, so everybody would shoulder a fair amount of losses. Japan's curbs have so far focused on asking restaurant to close early and refrain from serving alcohol, but not all restaurants and bars are complying with the non-binding rules.

Watanabe said he wanted the new leader to exercise more power over restaurants to abide by the curbs.