It’s hard to believe it’s over five months since we closed the doors of Grind, my restaurant and café business at the beginning of lockdown with eleven locations and more than 300 people employed.

Since the relaxation of the lockdown restrictions in July, some of our doors have been slowly, carefully, inching back open, but now Grind and countless other small businesses across the UK, are confronted with a long march forward.

Tough times for businesses in the capital

Last year, we crowdfunded £3.5m to fund our expansion and one of the main ambitions was to expand the business outside of our high street locations. Thankfully, the Grind at Home retail business exploded throughout lockdown – with more than two million of our compostable coffee pods for Nespresso machines sold within the first 90 days – recovering a decent chunk of the sales we have lost through the high street. Little did we know when we started that project that one day it would be such a vital lifeline for us. With this we have confidence Grind will be fine, but remain deeply worried about other businesses across the capital.

As a born Londoner, my wife and I stayed in the city through lockdown and it’s been such a relief to see people starting to return. That said, the tubes, trains and office buildings in central London remain below twenty per cent of the previous occupancy and this is nowhere near enough to support our capital, the engine of the UK economy. We might be a nation of shoppers, but right now no one is going to the shops.

Working from home won’t last

The WFH revolution, much like Tiger King and Zoom quizzes, will quickly become a thing of the past. It’s easy for the tech giants to tell their teams to work from home forever. We shouldn’t let the tech giants and the likes of Carlyle (the private equity giant who recently banned staff from getting the tube) set the tone. In Europe almost 75 per cent of staff are back in offices, but in the UK it’s only a third.

Work will evolve, like it always does, and the 5.30pm crush on the Northern Line might become a little less acceptable, but I don’t believe that 200 years of urbanisation will be reversed by this pandemic. The UK will not want to just sit at home on our laptops forever.

We stayed at home, we saved the NHS, and we stopped the spread of the virus. We have adjusted our way of life to contain it. London is a great city, filled with cabbies, builders, dry cleaners and sandwich shops. Rishi got us all to eat out to help out, which has been great, but it’s going to take more than a few weeks of discounted al-fresco dining to get this capital to its former glory.

We can’t expect to abandon London for eighteen months and then return to the same place we all love. And if we don’t get back soon, there may not be much of a London left to go back to. It’s time to get back to work.