The latest Xero Small Business Index shows an 11.1 per cent year-on-year surge in sales in November, but many business owners are concerned about omicron.
The owner of North Melbourne bakery Beatrix, Nat Paull, says the emergence of the highly contagious omicron COVID-19 variant forced her to delay plans to hire more staff and expand operations at the cult establishment.
After managing to operate solely on takeaways during the longest lockdown in the world, Ms Paull said Natalie Paull of Beatrix cafe in North Melbourne is preparing for the fact the city will probably go into another lockdown.“I think now, with omicron, we’ll be looking at keeping ourselves really lean and agile in case we have to go into another period of restrictive operations,” she toldThat means, despite having a solid November as restrictions eased and Melburnians began enjoying their freedom, Beatrix has kept its staffing level steady at 16 and continues to delay pre-pandemic growth plans.
“I guess we’re hoping that we won’t have to go into another lockdown but, obviously, we’re preparing for the fact we probably will,” Ms Paull said.Beatrix is one of tens of thousands of businesses across mainly NSW and Victoria facing similar decisions over the next few weeks as federal, state and territory leaders, as well as leading health experts, argue over the pathway forward and manage living with the virus and reducing the spread.
“We’re operating on a lot of guesswork about what are the right things to do,” Ms Paull said. “I wish there was a more united front making bigger, better decisions for the whole country.”The latest Xero Small Business Index shows an 11.1 per cent year-on-year surge in sales in November, which pushed the index back into better-than-average territory for the first time since the delta outbreak.
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