Keeping up morale at Riverside Quay

People are anxious about the COVID-19 outbreak, making it difficult to get a true picture of how it is affecting those living and working in Southbank.

Architects, stockbrokers and professional workers have left the office towers to work at home.

And those left behind in the hospitality industries are forced to be creative.

Café managers are designing new services, such as selling bread and milk, and using home delivery apps to suit the changing demographic of customers.

The square at Riverside Quay, once the hang-out of Melbourne’s well-dressed design community, has become more casual and local since the lockdown.

Even the guilty pleasure of coffee has taken on new meaning as regulars, some in thongs, slip into their favourite places to help local businesses stay alive.

“I try and get two coffees a day to keep them going,” said a customer of Workshop Brothers, who quickly vanished with his takeaway into an office above.

Many workers are afraid to go on the record about their new working conditions.

James, an architect at a nearby office, was working from home in his pyjamas.

“When he is having a meeting, he pops on a ‘show shirt’ as I’ve been calling it so he looks professional from the waist up,” his partner Lizzie said.

The smiling face of Mareno Pachello, the manager of D.O.C Pizza & Mozzarella Bar, is a welcome sight at Riverside Quay.

He has been greeting coffee drinkers through a small window open to a laneway. Sometimes he’s the only human contact residents are having.

Mareno is willing to crack a joke at his own expense about his new roster during the crisis, basically everything front of house.

“There’s just myself and the guy in the kitchen here,” Mareno said. “I’m actually mad because I’m still working.”

D.O.C has been open for takeaway pizzas but business has been slow since the corporates left so they’ve gone onto a delivery platform, Doordash, which can be downloaded as an app.

ASADO-to-go is also popular, one of the few businesses adapted to the new conditions. A few well-behaved locals were queuing for their takeaway empanadas when Southbank News visited.

This little square at Riverside Quay was once the coolest lunch place in Southbank but it is now mostly a dot on a map as people from the surrounding apartments clock up their kilometres to keep fit.

The mood in the back streets around Southbank Boulevard has become more sombre. There is no need to push the walk button on the crossing since there isn’t any traffic.

COVID-19 guidelines are being displayed prominently on food shops at Freshwater Place and outside on the lawn seems the best choice for a hassle-free lunch •

A man sat down to eat his roll but he wasn’t alone for long.

“Please leave that man’s sandwich alone seagull,” cried out a local. The seagull advanced. Nature was in ascendancy with so few passers-by.