When life throws a curveball, it can sometimes be an opportunity to knock it out of the park, and that's exactly what the staff at The Roundabout Inn did during the COVID lockdown.
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"We were told on Sunday night that we had to be closed by midday on Monday," licensee, Stewart Carruthers said.
Being a pub, The Roundabout Inn was among the businesses banned from operation under direction of the Federal Government after the National cabinet decided to force mandatory closures on Sunday, March 22.
"We didn't know what was happening. We had no guidelines. We were just told we had to shut," Stewart said.
He called his staff together to try to work out what they were going to do. They knew they could have the restaurant serve take away, so they worked on getting a menu together and getting the word out about the different method of trade.
The Kitchen offered take away and home delivery from Monday to Saturday, and according to Stewart, they did enough trade to keep the kitchen staff on.
It was good. It gave us time to get things done.
- Stewart Carruthers
With bar staff, it took a bit more creativity to keep all of them on the books. Thinking about all of the little jobs that needed to be done around the place, Stewart got them onto some light renovations. The Jobkeeper payment helped cover the cost of having them there and they set to work on painting.
"We brought in a professional painter to help us get the job done and show us what to do," Stewart said. Basically, his staff became mini-labourers to help get virtually all the walls inside painted and make a start on the outside.
But it wasn't just painting going on inside the place, there was also new lights installed, a bit of rearranging of the decorations and new signs.
"We had the bar resurfaced, which took a week," Stewart explained.
Outside the playground had a slight renovation with all the soft-fall material replaced, a job that took five days. And the large lit sign on the corner of the roundabout marking the business with pride was removed and replaced with a different version.
"It used to be a white background with black writing and now it's black background white writing. The same as the other signs," he said.
Together they got through a list of jobs that just couldn't be done while the business was open.
"It was good. It gave us time to get things done."
Since the doors have been allowed to reopen, the place has been booming.
"We've been flat out," Stewart said. "It's hard to know if the numbers are higher than before because there's less seats."
Following the COVIDsafe rules, the business is limited to how many people sit in one room and as it's based on physical space, they can't actually fit in the full number permitted. But they are doing everything they can to not turn people away, fitting tables in wherever they can.
"People have been really good, making bookings, waiting to be seated and signing in," he said. "But we have had to turn people away because we just don't have enough space."
So best to make a booking and to do so, call 6558 1816.