Restaurant body, AHAR, pegs revenue losses to the tune of more than fifty per cent.

The current lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted all small and medium restaurants in the city. There are over 8000 eateries registered with the restaurateur's body AHAR and those bearing the maximum brunt are the ones who have to take care of their large workforce.

Furthermore, overheads and sustained skilled worker salaries add to the woes of the eatery owners in their fight for survival, said Geeta Hansaria.

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Among those impacted is also one of the Mumbai's most renowned quick service restaurants - Achija established in 1987 in Ghatkopar, Pant-Nagar famous for its scrumptious Pav-Bhaji & Fast-Food.

"We are a chain of vegetarian restaurants and have been serving quality fast-food since 1987. There are always ups and downs in business but never in the last three decades have we seen such staggering disruption. The turmoil in the Food & Beverage sector is so severe that, it will easily take over a year for things to crawl back to normal," explained Tapan Mange, Restaurateur-Promoter, Achija.

Other restaurant owners have concerns similar to those expressed by Mange. Due to real estate being expensive in Mumbai, small eating joints have always had modest space to accommodate their customers. "We used to try and squeeze six people in a table that could comfortably accommodate four, during peak hours due to space crunch. Currently, due to social-distancing norms that the government has laid out for everyone's safety during the pandemic, we are not able to do this. Due to the lockdown, the footfalls have reduced drastically; however, the overheads, salaries, and maintenance costs still have to be borne by us. This impact may force us to hike our selling price," said the owner of Hotel Manohar, another long-standing eatery in Dadar.