Bristol’s Biggest Restaurant Group Releases Covid Manifesto

A sign of what many venues may look like after July 4th

One of the city’s best-loved hospitality groups, The Hyde & Co Group, have publicly released their post-lockdown restaurant manifesto, detailing how they’ll be ensuring the wellbeing of staff and customers as they begin to re-open their venues.

Founded over 10 years ago, The Hyde & Co Group includes some of Bristol’s most established and well known bars and restaurants, including Hyde & Co, The Milk Thistle, The Ox, Pata Negra, Bambalan, and most recently Seven Lucky Gods.

Like all hospitality groups they were forced to close all of their venues in March in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, but as they prepare for re-opening following the government’s announcement that hospitality venues can re-open on the 4th July, they’ve publicly revealed their group manifesto, which will ensure the safety of staff and customers across the group. 

The detailed manifesto covers everything from increased cleaning schedules, how social distancing will be implemented in each venue, and ensuring customers sign health declarations, as well as how the group will be communicating their new processes and how they’ll support both their staff and customers through what is undoubtedly going to be an uncertain time.

Some of the key features include:

Online Health Declaration form that all guests must complete before entering the restaurant or bar. This will include contact details and is kept safe so that they are able to contact everyone who dined with them if they need to (e.g. if there is a confirmed case of COVID-19 within the restaurant)

Running reduced menus to help with food cost and wastage.

Click and collect options will be available as much as possible at venues which can accommodate this

Potentially late night entertainment – Jazz at The Milk Thistle, late night eats & beats at The Ox, Ibiza beach bar vibes on the terrace at Bambalan – any suggestions from people are greatly appreciated

Alfresco dining – the Old City is to be pedestrianised and licensing laws relaxed to encourage businesses to spill out onto the pavement creating a European style atmosphere.

Use of QR codes – to help build a contactless ordering system

Speaking about the manifesto, Hyde & Co founder Nathan Lee said: 

“It’s been an incredibly difficult few months for all of us, and whilst many people will be looking forward to returning to bars and restaurants we completely understand that for many, the recent government announcement will be met with a lot of uncertainty. We felt that by being completely transparent with our plans, we’d hopefully do a little to help put people’s minds at ease.

“There’s going to be a huge amount of change ahead for all of us, and we’re under no illusions that the hospitality world as we knew it is going to be a very different place, so we wanted to share this manifesto to show that we’ll be doing everything in our power to make our venues as safe as possible for our team and our customers, whilst also bringing everyone some much-needed enjoyment after what’s been a tough time for us all.”

The Hyde & Co Group will be gradually reopening their venues across the coming weeks, starting with Seven Lucky Gods which will be open for collection and takeaway for the first time since lockdown on Thursday 25th June, with the rest of the venues to follow shortly.

The full Hyde & Co Group manifesto is available to read here.