The case for a new restaurant in the neighbourhood

I live in a suburb of a city near the sea. It is a small, quiet community with a row of small shops, one of which recently became empty when the owner retired.

We soon heard that someone was interested in opening a restaurant on the site. One of the residents, who is in the local council, told us that someone had applied for a licence to serve drinks in a restaurant.

Local residents were divided as to the desirability of having a restaurant. Those who do not like to eat out very often were very much against the idea. They felt that the presence of a restaurant would attract too many people to the area, and that this would spoil the peace of the place.

At the moment, the only place to eat in the vicinity is the dining room of a rather old-fashioned hotel. The food is not very good and the hotel certainly does not attract clientele from out of the area. Local residents only go there if they really want to eat out for some reason and cannot be bothered to go to the city or to a little town along the coast.

Other residents were very much in favour of the idea. They said that the lack of a good restaurant was one of the few drawbacks of our otherwise delightful suburb. They claimed that quite a number of people would eat out if there were somewhere nearby to go to.

They said that people wishing to dine out did not always want to make a journey in order to do so. They often liked to have wine with their meal and so they did not wish to drive. There was a good bus service to the city, but it was quite a long way to go. The seaside resort was much nearer, but the bus service there was infrequent and not very reliable. A restaurant on the spot would be the ideal solution to these problems.

Supporters of the restaurant also said that it would be very good for the proprietor of the local hotel to have some competition. A new restaurant might encourage the hotel owner to improve the standards of the hotel restaurant and then there would be two reasonable places to eat at.

For the moment, I am sitting on the fence until I hear what kind of restaurant it is going to be. If it is going to be a restaurant where people eat their food on the premises, I am very much in favour of it. My family and I like to eat out and we have long felt the need for a local restaurant. We have had one or two bad dining experiences in the local hotel and never go there now!

However, I am rather concerned that the restaurant in question might be a takeaway one. Before we moved to this suburb, we lived close to two takeaway restaurants. There were several disadvantages.

First, there was the litter problem. People often ate their takeaway food near the shops and then dropped their food wrappings on the pavement. There were rubbish bins there, but these were frequently overflowing.

Noise was also a problem. People not only made a lot of noise ordering and eating their food, but they slammed the doors of their cars as they rushed in to get their food. Added to this was the fact that food smells from takeaways are much more pervasive than those from ordinary restaurants.

So, you see why I have not, as yet, given my blessing to the new restaurant!