Closing down for winter: Chef Si Toft on giving himself a ‘fighting chance’

Last week, I closed my restaurant, The Dining Room, in Abersoch, north Wales, for the winter, with no guarantee that I’ll open again in spring. It’s a scary situation to be in, but one many small businesses are likely to find themselves in this year.

I’ve suspected for a while that closing temporarily would be inevitable. After almost a decade of sticking it out through the quieter months – riding on waves of busy summers – we decided three or four years ago that to do so wasn’t viable, and we reduced our opening times and paused service.

But here, on the coast in rural Wales, we’ve never shut the doors this early on, and we’ve never done so with the nagging uncertainty that we might not reopen at all.

The bottom line is that I need a certain amount in the restaurant account by the end of September to get me through. This year, I’m short. Five figures short.

In a seasonal area like ours, running at a loss during winter is something you come to accept. It’s factored in. This year, though, the goalposts have been moved, and with every price hike they keep moving.

We didn’t have a terrible summer – we had a few staffing issues in terms of numbers, but most in the industry did, and the team I have is brilliant and so we made it work. My average spend was about where I’d expected it to be and no shows were manageable.

What I hadn’t anticipated was just how much my costs would spiral. I thought I’d given myself enough leeway to be able to stick to the three course price of the last couple of years – £39 – but I was way off.

I change the menu weekly, daily if needed, so I’m not tied to particular products or suppliers. Normally, this means I can juggle menus around enough to cope with fluctuations. But that kind of relies on prices going up, and then back down, not up and then up some more.

Am I able to carry on? Obviously I could. Based on previous years, the fighting fund I have left from summer might cover me until Christmas or New Year (probably worth pointing out our Christmas and New Year is not even slightly comparable to the Christmas party bump in the big city), but what then? I’d still be closed, but I’d be closed with nothing left.

As it stands, we’ve basically counted back from early spring, when trade usually begins to pick up, and added up our fixed costs/overheads to then. At this point, we have that and a little more put aside. In previous years I might’ve been more inclined to gamble a little longer, or maybe tried a couple of the stronger weeks over Christmas, but when you’ve spent the summer stressing about how long the oven’s on to braise the featherblade as electricity spirals, the idea of having the heating on all day, then hoping the first guests don’t leave the door open for more than a few seconds, makes you think twice.

For the first time in ages I’ve let my grown-up business head make a decision and override my stubborn sentimental one. But honestly, it’s a massive slap in the face to get through the last couple of years and then be hit with this. After Covid, people were encouraged to go out and support us – people seemed to want to return to normal which gave us all the push to be more positive and believe we could get through. And we did, we got through, and then came 2022.

People are more cautious about spending, and who can blame them? I certainly can’t. I’m choosing a cautious approach – the only course of action that I feel will give me a fighting chance of still having a business come spring. It’s not been an easy decision because I want to stay open for my team, and I also feel I owe it to the community. The feeling that I’m failing both isn’t an easy thought to reconcile. Then again, neither is the thought that if I don’t close now, I might just never reopen.

Read more industry insights here