'This Is A Disappointing Setback': Melb Venue Operators On Restriction Extensions

Following a spike in COVID-19 cases over the past week, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced at the weekend that "restaurants, pubs, auction halls, community halls, libraries, museums and places of worship – will all stay at a maximum of 20 people in any one space until 12 July".

For the hospitality and live music sectors, it's another crushing blow following months of closures. In a time where many were expecting to allow greater numbers into their venues (per Prime Minister Scott Morrison's change restrictions announcement), they are now faced with further limitations. 

The city's much-loved Cherry Bar announced their reopening last week with the venue planning to operate to the capacity of seven tables of four people, with two sittings taking place across an evening from Wednesday 24 June. The new restrictions mean a loss of a further 16 patrons each night for their seated live shows. 

"This is a disappointing setback for us as we had put considerable time into meticulously planning how we could reopen and put on live music and generate enough money for that to be sustainable," Cherry Bar's Nicholas Jones told The Music. 

"We spent the weekend changing a few things around with our systems and table layout. We will have to further reduce our capacity in the bandroom down to 20 patrons which makes holding gigs that much harder in an already difficult scenario."

"At Small Time we have a liquor license and planning permit for 100 people, so we're not a large space," shared founder and owner of Brunswick's Small Time Group, Steve Hibberd. 

"Opening only three weeks before the lockdown came into effect meant we didn't really have time to see what our normal looked like, and so compared to take away only during lockdown, the reopening to current levels of maximum 20 per space has been really positive. We've been booked out most nights, lots of repeat visitors, etc."

"Given the nature of our spaces, at the maximum 20 level per separated area means we can have capacity 30 in, and most importantly for us that's allowed us to start up our live stream gigs, week one with Alana Wilkinson and on Saturday night with Nat Vazer, and soon we'll increase to two live stream gigs per week, a 'Featured Artist Program' gig and a 'Small Time TV' session.

Cherry Bar have already started implementing plans to help the venue stay afloat following the changes. 

"To counter this we're going to start opening our downstairs bar just for drinks so that patrons can come in and have a drink to make up for the lost capacity in the bandroom," said Jones. 

"Thankfully we've already been streaming shows for the past few weeks and there are no capacity limits on the number of people that can pay and watch the gig from their lounge rooms. This model has allowed us to do shows with the likes of Chris Cheney, Phil Jamieson, Even, Dallas Crane and more already."

Small Time are also looking to the future and restrictions lifting will mean for them. 

"The impact of not opening up further is not a major issue for us as the four-square-metre rule per person limits our capacity greatly. The change that will deliver real value is reducing the four-square-metre to say two-square-metre per person from a capacity perspective. 

"All in all, we've seen people in our space and live stream gigs (which were always part of our model) as a huge positive resulting in a nice increase in revenue, albeit we are still loss making without JobKeeper. Changing the four-square-metre would help us, but aside from that we just need to work hard to maximise what we can do to be at least break even before JobKeeper goes away."