Fast food restaurants in Dunedin were calm this morning but by the time lunchtime and dinner rolled around, so did those hungry for chips and a burger.
The country south of Auckland dropped an alert level from 4 overnight, ushering in some easing of restrictions for people, including being able to buy takeaway coffee and fast food again.
Great King St has been clogged with traffic this evening as long queues of cars waited for an Alert Level 3 fix of takeaways.
The North Dunedin branches of McDonald's and KFC had long lines of cars leading to their drive-through windows, with hungry diners looking for their first feed of fast food in a fortnight.
A police spokesman said they would be performing scheduled checks at takeaway premises throughout the evening to provide traffic management where needed.
At lunchtime, there were over 40 cars lining up for the McDonald’s drive-through in South Dunedin at 1pm, with cars spilling out on to the Macandrew Rd.
Police assisted staff with traffic management.
McDonald's Andersons Bay owner Justin Stonelake said he had expected a lunchtime rush, however he did not realise how large it would be.
The rush started at about 12pm and he expected it would calm down by the afternoon.
It took about 20 minutes for people to get their food.
It was difficult to operate under level three protocols and there were only so many cars that could fit on the premises.
Despite the rush all of the customers had been good to deal with and were understanding. He expected traffic to be back to usual tomorrow.
The midday rush came after demand was relatively quiet this morning.
McDonald's Andersons Bay had a steady stream of about 10 cars at 8am.
Ngapera Andrews said she had been looking forward to getting hot cakes since the lockdown began.
She had struggled without her coffee and was contemplating adding a triple cheeseburger to her order to celebrate.
Pesajon Tili said he had taken the day off work to make sure he could get his fast food fix.
He came from a ‘‘takeaway family’’ and it had been difficult to go without.
‘‘It’s a daily for us, Monday to Friday.
‘‘Maybe a hungover Sunday as well.’’
The Fix cafe owner Tim Milmine said reopening had been great there were a good steady amount of customers.
There were about eight orders put in for coffee when the cafe opened, and more coming in every few minutes.
Bacon Buttie Station assistant manager Katie Bathgate said there was a lot of prep work to do overnight, but everything was ready to reopen.
They could not order in any stock until the announcement was confirmed yesterday, but fortunately everything had come in on time.
- Additional reporting by Andrew Marshall
