Opening the doors is like 'a ray of sunshine' for Bulli brewery

After a year renovating the old railway guest house in Station Street, co-owners Stephen House and Brendan Dowd finally opened the doors in mid-March.

They got a week of business in - and good business it was too. They went through 3500 litres of beer in seven days.

READ MORE: Bulli residents keen for a few beers at Resin

Then the government restricted the numbers of people allowed in and quickly followed that with an order to shut down pubs and clubs.

"It was heartbreaking" Mr House said. "The first week was unreal. We were a bit overwhelmed by how well supported it was.

"But when it got fully shut down that was really hard to handle. After spending a year on building, with cash going out, cash going out, finally here we were thinking we'd have some coming back in."

The owners managed to find the silver lining on what was a very big cloud. The forced closure pushed them to set up refillable growler sales and order a canning machine - neither of those things would have been done any time soon if it had been business as usual.

The very popular response to growler sales - there is a queue out to the street every Friday - and the JobKeeper payments allowed Resin Brewing to keep afloat and keep some staff on the books.

"Profit wasn't the name of the game," Mr House said, "it was just staying alive and keeping the team together."

The easing of restrictions on Friday was welcomed by the Resin owners, who said having been open for takeaway food over the last month and a half meant it was viable to offer table service.

And, even though they are a brewery with a lot of beer on tap, it is table service only - no-one can rock up and hang around the bar.

"We're pushing bookings - it will be full table service in two-hour sittings," Mr Dowd said.

"It will be strictly kept at 10 people. When we're taking bookings we're telling people that everyone must order food."

On a nice day, lunch seating will be on the outdoor deck while dinner will be served in the three heritage rooms - so that different groups will be more than the required 1.5-metres apart.

The ability to re-open was "like the first ray of sunshine peeking through the clouds", but they've had to take new approach to dining in the era of coronavirus.

For instance, salt and pepper shakers are out, because they can't stay on the table and be shared from one booking to the next, the takeaway menu had to be reconfigured and laminated for sit-down service, and they need to take down the contact details of any diner who doesn't have the COVIDsafe app on their phone.

Even a diner's request for a mixed platter caused some debate.

"How's a platter work in COVID days -should we be allowing people to take from a shared plate?" Mr Dowd said.

"It's all these grey areas where we've got to make our own decision and we thought, 'let's not do that. Let's just offer standard plates, so people aren't sharing."