For Brody Peterson, like many other hospitality operators, it’s a battle to keep the doors of his venues open at the moment. Owner of Paddington gastropub, The Village Inn, Peterson lays out the story of his last few weeks in stark terms; named publicly as a “Covid hotspot”, when in truth, “there was a lady, who dined here on July 11 and five days later she tested positive, but no other cases came out of it,” says Peterson. “But it’s absolutely ruined my business.”

Heading home from a family holiday in Byron on July 20th, Peterson took a call from one of his managers. “He says, I’m just letting you know we’ve been blasted all over the news as a hot spot in the eastern suburbs,” recalls Peterson. Jumping into action his team initiated a communications plan, his manager calling New South Wales Health for advice on the situation. “We found out that they had known for about three days and we found out via the media,“ says Peterson. “They told us they needed to get all the names and numbers that we’d collected for that day to start notifying people that they should be getting tested if they’re feeling bad. So we said not a problem. And well, what do we do? What do you guys recommend we do? Do we close or do we remain open?”

Peterson makes the point a number of times during our call that speaking out isn’t about blasting NSW Health or the media outlets who branded them a “hot spot”, when in actual fact there was just one case and no community transmission. It is more an opportunity to share their story, of how events roll out, how businesses can react, what they can expect and how communities react. He’s calm but there’s an underlying frustration. “Reopening in June was a bit stressful, implementing the covid safe plans and making sure we were doing the right things. But we’re really strict across my venues [Peterson also owns Riley Street Garage]. We were still running at half capacity; my managers do a really great job.”

Without any firm advice from NSW Health, Peterson closed The Village Inn for a week to ensure staff could be tested, to deep clean the venue and prepare for another reopening. In that time he received positive messages of support from locals, alongside angry and often abusive phone calls from patrons who dined on or around July 11, demanding to know why they hadn’t been called; Peterson and his staff explaining that the contact tracing exercise is out of their hands. Some local businesses have displayed signs saying “if you’ve been to The Village Inn we do not welcome you into our store,” says Peterson. “We’re trying to talk to these people. You know, we’re a community, we need to be helping each other. This is bad for the community.”

Reopening has been a further shock. As doors opened patrons stayed away. “We went from busy seven days a week, seven nights, great trade. Now we’ve had to totally reduce our hours. “I’m just running full time staff. After we reopened in June, we got all these new staff members; able to hire about four or five more new casuals. We reopened four days, expanded to seven days pretty quickly, still under the guidelines of how many people we were allowed in. But I was allowed to staff up and now I can’t have these people work because I don’t have anyone coming in the door. So, it’s not only effected revenue, but I’ve now hired all these people and now I can’t even put them back to work.”

Peterson has fielded calls from hospitality peers, giving advice on a situation that could happen to anyone. “I’ve just been saying, OK get ready for it. Have a plan in place that if by chance you’re named as a spot, get ready to close the venue down as quick as you can, have your communications ready because it’s about helping cut the community spread. Don’t expect to reopen as you were pre notification. Unfortunately the perception of these things now is stay away.

Changing those perception is now key for Peterson: to remind patrons that they’re a community focused local, “no pokies, dog friendly,” that opened with “strong and tight controls” from the outset. It’s an uphill battle.