The owner of a popular Keswick restaurant hopes the setting up of a new café will help his business ‘ride out the storm’ of the coronavirus pandemic.
For the first time, Morrel’s, on Lake Road, has opened a daytime café to help it bounce back post-lockdown.
The restaurant, which opened its doors in 2004, previously only served diners six nights a week, but it is now open for breakfast and lunch Tuesday to Sunday, alongside a limited evening menu.
Head chef and co-owner Karl Link said: “We’ve just got to buckle down, ride out the storm and hopefully come out of this on the other side. Everyone is in the same boat.”
Karl runs Morrel’s with his wife Rebecca, her brother Errol and his wife Carol. The quartet were working in the food industry in London when they came up with the idea of moving to the Lake District.
Karl said: “I always wanted to get into the restaurant side of it. Carol knew someone who had hotels in the Lake District so we took the chance.
“I was only 25, but your aspirations as a young chef are always to have your own restaurant.
“It’s been a rocky road at times, but 28 years later and we are still here.”
The coronavirus pandemic forced the couples to rethink their business model. Around 25 per cent of their patrons came from Theatre by the Lake, but when the lockdown came into force, Morrel’s and the theatre had to close.
Karl and his team have taken the leap to create a café during the day in a bid to welcome more customers through the door. Customers can now sit outside on Lake Road and Karl is hopeful that outdoor capacity will give returning customers confidence.
He said: “Opening the cafe is like starting a new business. It’s for the customers, and all we can do is give it a go.”
Like the restaurant, the cafe at Morrel’s is a family-run enterprise. Rebecca does all the baking, and Bibi, Karl and Rebecca’s daughter, has taken on managing the cafe.
Since reopening, the café and restaurant have been busy, Karl said.
He added: “Keswick is as busy, if not busier than it was before the pandemic. With less people going abroad it means tourists are supporting this country, which is brilliant.”
Karl said the real test for Morrel’s would come in the winter months, once tourism in Keswick has died down.
“Good, local trade bodes well for the winter but we don’t know how it will pan out now the theatre is not reopening until March.
“Hopefully the cafe will be well established enough by then to see us through.”
The 2001 foot and mouth outbreak and the floods in 2005, 2009 and 2015, were particularly challenging times for the business, he said.
He added: “During foot and mouth, people were told not to come to Cumbria, and after the floods, we had to close down for a few days. It takes people time to come back after something like that.”
But he said coronavirus was a far worse tragedy because of its knock-on effect.
He said: “Supply and demand has a massive chain effect. Suppliers have furloughed staff or made them redundant. Now the industries back at full pelt, you can’t get certain products and delivery times are pushed back. It’s not ideal.
“Not knowing when we could open for three or four months was hard. When we went into lockdown the team put on a sweepstake. Most said we’d reopen in June, but thank goodness we could reopen by August.
“If the lockdown measures had been kept until October it would have killed the whole of the Lake District. Closing is the last thing you want to do when you have to get through the winter with less business.”
