Restaurants and retailers in the Britomart area were closed and some facing uncertainty over when they could reopen following Thursday morning’s shooting, on what they had expected to be a busy day with the opening matches of the FIFA World Cup.
Gill French, operations manager for Comensa Group, which owns Britomart restaurants Perch dumpling bar and Cafe Hanoi, said Perch was closed as its location on lower Commerce St put it behind the police cordon. Staff had been cancelled for the morning but would still be paid.
Cafe Hanoi would open for lunch as usual, and French was “hopeful there would be FIFA supporters wanting something to eat”.
However, lunch bookings had dropped by about 65% between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, “which is understandable”, French said. That included a table of 14.
Dinner reservations at the 90 to 100-seat restaurant were “looking ok”.
While it was “terrifying, and so freaking sad” to see a live shooting event in Auckland, French said she was feeling “confident” given the incident had been determined an isolated one.
With a heavy police presence, “town is going to be very safe today”, she said.
Comensa had left it up to staff whether they wanted to come in to work or not. Most were happy to do so.
Clothing retailer Superette had closed its Commercial Bay store for the day.
In a post to Facebook Superette owners Rickie Dee and James Rigden confirmed all staff were safe and had been evacuated from the area.
Imogen Seymour, national retail manager at Kate Sylvester, said no staff were at the Commercial Bay store at the time of the shooting and the store would remain closed for the day.
Meanwhile, many businesses were on standby and were waiting to be able to open later in the day as they expected it to be busy with the FIFA World Cup kicking off in the evening.
Ben Bayly’s two restaurants in Commercial Bay, Origine and Ahi, were closed for lunch service on Thursday.
Bayly said they were hoping to open for dinner but waiting to hear from Precinct Properties, which operates both Commercial Bay and the shooting site, on whether that would be possible.
If so, the restaurants would be serving at least one third fewer bookings than it was expecting.
“Just terrible timing,” Bayly said. Auckland really needed the boost of tourism following a couple of quiet months for the hospitality industry, he said.
However, his key concern was with the victims of the shootings, and with Precinct and construction company LT McGuinness, which had also built Ahi.
“Those companies are absolutely fantastic and don’t deserve that,” he said.
Nico Bonnaud, director at Honest Chocolat, said the store would remain closed until it got the all clear to open.
"We would have expected to be busy, but hopefully we can still have some trading hours. This is beyond our control though and understand the situation," he said.
Karyn Little, store manager of Edmund Hilary Collection was also waiting until it could reopen, but the incident still felt raw.
“Many of those workers from that site come into our store. We imagine it will affect them for a very long time.”
Up the road at Devonport Chocolates, commercial director Kevin Angland said the Queens Arcade store opened when it was safe to do so but foot traffic was down.
“Not surprisingly we have already seen a drop in customers coming into the store today, and expect it to remain this way for the remainder of the day even with the FIFA World Cup kicking off today.”
Bayly was hopeful Thursday’s tragedy would not keep FIFA supporters away from downtown Auckland.
”People know this is not New Zealand, hopefully,” he said. “It’s not a normal day in New Zealand.”
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