What have been your biggest challenges as a Bar and restaurant this year?
Before lockdown, we had teamed up with The Whisky Ambassador Ltd and Iain Burnett Highland Chocolatier to create a bespoke whisky tasting experience for our customers to enjoy. With over 100 whiskies offered at The Seaforth and our very own Whisky Bible, we were excited to launch our new whisky tasting packages. We had to put our launch on hold until 2021 due to the current pandemic. We have since faced many challenges since coming out of lockdown.
Before opening again, the Safety of our Staff and Customers was and still is our highest priority. This included doing an in-depth risk
assessment and carefully planned overview of how to welcome our customers back safely. We have had to adjust to each announcement made and make sure we followed all the guidelines given.
Following government guidelines before opening, we were delighted to be able to open up our lovely beer garden, which we are still running today. We were privileged to already have in place a wide variety of outdoor seating, including an undercover patio area which customers have made the most of this year.
We are also incredibly blessed to have the wonderful views of not only the Loch but also wonderful hills around us. We made the decision not to Open our Restaurant at first but instead offered Our Fish and Chip shop customers seating inside for those rainy days. We were delighted to receive all the support from our Customers asking us to please Open our restaurant a few days a week. Of course, we missed them so made the decision to open Wednesday – Sunday’s.
We had already reshuffled a few tables for social distancing and had already installed our one way systems and Track and Trace. So Opening our Restaurant side with a simple but delicious menu was fairly straight forward.
We have enjoyed welcoming guests back that last visited The Seaforth in the 1960s, 1970’s and 1980’s as a lot of people were choosing to do staycations this year.
We have learnt so much about The history of The Seaforth and of Ullapool.
Wearing masks was a full team decision.
Our village was pro masks and wearing masks meant we kept others in our community safe. So, of course, we all chose to wear masks. We do find it strange smiling while wearing masks, but I think people can generally see your eyes light up.
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