KIOSKS, cafés and restaurants along the Island’s coast are getting ready to weather the storm…
Storm Ciarán is expected to batter Jersey with gusts up to 95mph, with the worst conditions predicted to take hold from 4am to 9am tomorrow morning.
Pizza Quarter has two cabins on slipways at Bel Royal and Grève d’Azette, as well as ‘The Kiosk’ in the car park at Bel Royal and another eatery at Gorey.
Operations director Ozzie Orchison said that all the cabins had been robustly built and had weathered strong storms in the past.
He said: “We may close early this evening, but we plan to be open as normal tomorrow evening, once the storm has passed. We won’t be putting our delivery drivers at risk so we will be assessing the situation as it develops.
“We also been battening down our outside furniture too.”
The company behind Pizza Quarter has also recently craned its latest eatery into place. Mr Orchison said he hoped the new Lifeboat Café on the Albert Pier would be open in the next two to three weeks.
The Lookout Café at First Tower closed this morning and will hopefully reopen on Friday. Front-of-house manager Sam Mawhinney said that business was today preparing for the storm.
“We are building a wooden shield around the building and also putting out sandbags,” she said. “We were going to close at 5 pm today but decided to close this morning because the shield of wooden boards, which is now going up, made it impossible for customers to come it.
“We’ve also put our outside furniture to one side. We want to get this storm out of the way and then we can focus on our Dine Out and Christmas menus.”
Lucy Mason, who co-owns Nude Beach at La Haule said that AAL Recycling had this morning placed large sandbags in front of the café to effectively create a breakwater around it.
She added that its foundations had been reenforced when Nude took over the business and it had survived some harsh storms in the past. Like the Lookout, Nude Beach, and Dunes at La Pulente, will be closed on Thursday, following government advice, and will hopefully reopen on Friday.
Dom and Katerina Smajda manage the Beach Café in Longbeach in Gorey, where a container owned by a watersports company was swept out to sea during bad weather in 2018.
With that incident in mind, they have prepared their business for the storm as much as possible.
Mr Smajda said: “Everything is tied and both shipping containers and waterproof and anchored down. [As for] the café itself, everything that could be damaged is out.”
Mrs Smajda added: “The electricity and water have been turned off for safety and there shouldn’t be anything loose.”
