Hard work, hope and imagination offer recipe for success

Lifestyle – Restaurants and bars that serve food face new challenges as they learn to operate in a Covid-19 world. Stringent new safety regulations must be adhered to while customer capacity has been reduced across the board. It’s not an easy time but as they adjust to these strange circumstances, three of those on the frontline tell JUDY MURPHY how they are adapting and of their hopes for the future.

Lighthouse Café

It takes a brave person to expand their business at present, but that’s exactly what Kerry Leigh and her husband Mark have done.

The Leighs, who own the Lighthouse Café, a small but successful vegan restaurant on Galway City’s Abbeygate Street, had already decided to expand before Covid-19 shut down Ireland.

With their Abbeygate Street premises closed they had some hard calls to make, but they decided to forge ahead and open the new premises in Terryland. Although it’s early days, that space has been a godsend, according to Kerry.

The initial plan, when they signed the lease for the Terryland restaurant last November, had been for two sit-down venues.

“But Abbeygate Street is so small we’ve had to change everything,” says Kerry. Under current guidelines, only she and Mark would have been able to work in the kitchen of that café which can seat 24 indoors in normal times.

That meant running it as a restaurant when they reopened – even with extra seats outdoors – wasn’t possible.

Instead, they’ve played to the strengths of both venues. For now, all their savoury food is being made in the Terryland kitchen and ferried into the Abbeygate Street premises via e-bike and trailer. A take-away menu operating there is proving popular with regulars and visitors.

And while dropping off the savoury dishes, they collect scones and desserts which are made in Abbeygate Street, and transport them to Terryland. That means a comprehensive menu is available in each place.

Pre-Covid, the new Terryland space could have accommodated up to 35 diners; now it’s 16 or 17, says Kerry.

The Leighs, who took over the lease of the existing Lighthouse Café in 2017, showed that vegetarian and vegan food could be seriously tasty as well as healthy. It soon became so popular, customers were queuing for a seat.

“We wanted to expand, but we couldn’t go up and we couldn’t go sideways,” Kerry explains of the physical constraints they faced in the city centre space. And they needed more room. They began to discuss it seriously last Autumn and by November had the lease sorted. The Terryland Lighthouse was due to open in early June but Covid delayed everything. Their landlord was reasonable about the rent, and the couple decided to keep going.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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