They are just not working around the clock yet, but that won’t last long at Bavaria in Lieshout. Since the government gave the ‘yes’ for the continuation of carnival, the tank trucks at the brewery have hardly stopped. For days, people have been working at full capacity to provide the Brabant catering industry with beer. From Friday, there will be a notch on top.
Rob Windt is one of the drivers who has to supply the bars. He drives to between six and twelve addresses in one day. And he can also work with his colleagues during carnival. “We then drive with two shifts,” he says. “The day shift runs from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and the night shift also runs from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m..”
At the press conference last Tuesday, they were all on the edge of the seat at Bavaria. “We looked at it together. As soon as it was over, we started calling around,” says Niels van de Sande of Bavaria.
From service technicians to office staff: whoever could step in to make agreements with catering entrepreneurs. “Service technicians go along with colleagues who have to do the delivery for events, help the people from the office with the planning for tank beer.” He laughs when he says: “We have shown internally here that Carnival is a celebration of fraternization.”
The government message was not completely unexpected, admits Van de Sande. “In November we already suspected that carnival would continue. We did have to convince some people within the company of that, but it now means that we benefit a lot from it, because we were prepared for it.”
They could not have known that many other corona measures in the catering industry would expire next weekend. “All in all, we’re busy enough. We try to fill every gap in the schedule, so that at the end of the week we have enough air for carnival deliveries.”
Whether he still has enough energy to celebrate carnival this weekend is not yet known. “If everything goes well, we might just go on the road ourselves.”