There won’t be any meals at Spur when South Africa’s Covid-19 lockdown ends – and no takeaways either.

Spur stores will not reopen at the end of lockdown (when physical-distancing rules are expected to apply again) the restaurant group has told landlords, because that would be “commercial suicide”.

Other than a few of the group’s Rocomamas burger joints, all Spur and Panarottis restaurants will remain closed as long as they face restrictions on the number of customers and when they can sell booze, Spur group’s chief operating officer Mark Farrelly said in a letter to landlords.

That decision comes from hard experience immediately before the lockdown, when such restrictions were first introduced.

“The restricted trade was so injurious that the lockdown almost came as a relief as the cost of individual closures was preferable to the hideous trading losses our franchisees were incurring,” Farrelly wrote.

“On average, our turnovers dropped over 70%, and it proved impossible to run a viable business with the restrictions in place.”

Spur, he said, was not going to have its franchisees take on the cost of reopening after lockdown, “only then to sustain catastrophic losses.”

Unlike other retailers and restaurants, Spur never said when it would reopen, instead telling customers they’ll “be updated”.