Pubs and restaurants haven’t reached the post-Covid champagne moment yet | Kate Nicholls

The sector is beginning to bubble but will still need government goodwill to prosper, says insider

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While photos of customers celebrating being back inside pubs and restaurants were splashed all over the media this month as the sector reached a milestone in the road to recovery, it was still far from a champagne moment for the industry.

For the majority of hospitality businesses this was the first time they have been able to open since December, as just one-third of venues had the space to open outdoors in April. That’s five long, hard months without revenue, preceded by many more months of heavily disrupted trading since the start of the pandemic.