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ROCKFISH: COPING WITH THE COVID CRISIS


The Rockfish restaurant group has grown rapidly since first opening in Dartmouth in 2010. Like so many businesses, the Covid crisis brought its forward trajectory to a crashing halt. Closing through lockdown presented it with a real threat that it may not suvive. Quick action, new financing and a rethink about what it does best helped it come out of lockdown well prepared. Owner Mitch Tonks describes how they coped with such an unprecedented situation.


“W


e sensed things were building up pretty quick around the middle of March. Over a


glass of wine, I emailed my team and board colleagues to say I had come to the decision to close all our sites, earlier than mandated. This gave us time to close down properly, deep clean and throw away all our food stocks. It was a lot of waste over 9 restaurants! I went into Rockfish Brixham on the 20th, the day everyone was closing and drank a brandy with the staff and said goodbye for now. This was the strangest moment of all not knowing when, or if, we would be back. The first weeks of lockdown were tough from a business sense having to react to daily news and try and find a way through. I knew how much money we had and how long that would give us. Initlially, I thought it would be a few months and we


would soon be out of this. But then the talk started of a year or more and we had to change our thinking. I had daily calls with my team of Mat, Nick & Laura and together we planned the way forward and continued to check in daily. My mantra was thrive and survive at all costs whilst maintaining our reputation, including


“As the news became more positive, we started to talk about how


Rockfish could be an even better business”


that of all our staff and suppliers. We saved all 274 jobs at Rockfish and paid all our suppliers, we had co operation and support from our landlords and we raised the funding we needed; that put us in a strong position to ride this out. Then, in the middle of lockdown, we turned our thoughts to how we could help others. I was working with a few other companies lobbying government on how things were in rural areas like ours, as then all the talk was about London. This included an hour’s Zoom call with Boris who listened to what we had to say. We then looked at how we could help our suppliers who had fields of produce and landings of fish with nowhere for it to go so we set up a weekly market, landed the catch of


our boat “ Rockfisher” direct to people on the quay which really helped Nick the skipper and his crew in tough times. He loved seeing people buying the fish he had caught with such enthusiasm. These weekly markets became “events” for people to look forward to in challenging times. Our furloughed staff volunteered to make fish pies and raised money for the local food bank. I have to say lockdown heightened the sense of community, co’operation & generosity amongst most people and it’s one thing I hope will remain permanent when we come out of this. As the news became more positive, we started to talk about how Rockfish could be an even better business and we looked at all the stuff we did and just tore things up and started again. We kept the bits we knew people loved but shortened menus and wine lists, made paperwork easier for staff, adjusted hours and shift patterns and dreamt up a new fishmonger


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