Hospitality Heroes: Refurbishment undertaken at Cheddar's Zen Thai Restaurant ready for grand reopening

Welcome to the latest in our Hospitality Heroes series on Cheddar Nub News.

We will be providing you with a profile of a number of fantastic hospitality venues ahead of their reopening in April and May.

The industry has been hit particularly hard with pubs and restaurants only open for four out of the last 12 months.

Today here is everything you need to know about Zen Thai Restaurant.

Situated in The Cliffs at the bottom of Cheddar Gorge, Zen Thai's owner and general manager Spencer Wallace has been busy fine tuning the takeaway offering while refurbishing the restaurant ready for a grand reopening in May.

Spencer told Cheddar Nub News: "Despite not quite reaching our first anniversary when we went in to lockdown 1.0, we have continued to grow and develop the business by adapting our marketing strategy as changes have been imposed.

"After an initial closure during April and May 2020, we introduced our contactless takeaway service in June 2020 to much acclaim and we have continued to fine tune it since then, meaning that when we allocate you a collection time slot, we work to it as closely as humanly possible, resulting in a seamless process where waiting for collections is eradicated.

"The period that we were allowed to open for dine in from July to October, saw us achieve huge growth on the previous year, helped enormously by Eat Out to Help Out and we worked tirelessly to promote the restaurant achieving Number 1 status on Tripadvisor and Google, only to have our efforts dashed again when lockdown 2.0 came in November.

"We have utilised the closed period to refurbish the restaurant, upgrade our toilet facilities and generally get things ready for what we believe will be a very busy time once lockdown 3.0 finally ends.

"While we may be a small business we have seven full-time staff and we are very proud of the fact that they have all been retained throughout with only a minimal amount of furlough. We are now readying ourselves for our grand reopening on May 18."

You can visit the Zen Thai Restaurant website HERE.

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Check out our other Hospitality Heroes article:

Hope for the future at Franks Restaurant