Lack of York city centre office workers ‘put an end to sandwich shop business’

A York city centre sandwich shop has revealed the impact of the pandemic on its business as workers have continued to stay away from their offices.

Krusties in Patrick Pool, near Shambles Market, has applied for planning permission to open the first and second floors of their building so that customers can eat inside.

But the owners of the sandwich shop have warned that people continuing to work from home is hitting their business.

The planning application says the cafe would like to open the upper floors, which have been closed for more than seven years, where 12 tables could be installed and a bathroom brought back into use.

The building is grade II-listed and work has already begun on repairing and redecorating the upper floors, according to the application.

Tried to reopen

A statement says: “The Covid-19 crisis put an end to our business as it was before March this year.

“The limited area on the ground floor is not allowing us to host our customers inside the shop while waiting for their food to be prepared.

“We tried to re-open the shop for three weeks with no good results.

“Our customers used to be workers within the city centre, [who] during their lunchtime came to our shop where they could find good quality food, homemade, at very low prices.

“Now 90 per cent of all our customers are working from home and maybe only half of them will return to work from their offices by September.”

It warns that even at that stage, it may be difficult to recover costs and for the business to survive.

Refurb work underway

The upper floors are not currently in use but refurbishment work began in May.

Works include decorating walls and revamping the floors, windows, lighting and bathroom

The application adds: “The ground floor which is very small cannot host customers at the moment due to social distancing rules and the upper floors development would allow our business to offer a multiple choice of food and hot drinks as well to our future customers.

“The new concept will allow us to host more customers in the same time and may cover the costs.”