It's been ten days since the provincial government removed proof of vaccination requirements to dine in and one Swift Current restaurant is reaping the rewards.

Since the change, that came into effect on Valentine's Day, Humpty's Family Restaurant has experienced an enormous boost to their bottom line.

For the 19 Mondays that the vaccine passport was in place, the business on average would bring in $1,000 a day in sales. That number ballooned to around $3,000 the first day proof of vaccination was dropped and has been steady since.

"The thing is I have the papers to back me up on this," Kosta Kanakis, the owner of Humpty's Family Restaurant, said. "I have the papers from before and the papers after.

"It was like the lights were off or the powers off and you just turn it on again. It's that much of a difference, it's so huge. I don't know if people even realize it if you're not in the restaurant business."

The restaurant was stable financially for the majority of the COVID-19 pandemic thanks to wage and rent subsidies offered by the government. Once those disappeared, the 50 per cent capacity limit combined with masking and proof of vaccination hurt the business big time.

"It was like a knife cutting through butter," he said referencing the massive loss in revenue.

Kanakis attributed a 10-15 per cent drop in customers to the mask policy, but it was the vaccine passport he says lost them around 60 per cent of their business.

"Even if 85 per cent of people were vaccinated, it doesn't mean that people are going to come inside because if there was one person in the whole family [who wasn't, they couldn't]," he said. "I don't remember seeing families the last five months out, it was tables of two."

The local restaurant owner said he's thankful the government removed the vaccine passports as he was becoming worried about the future of Humpty's Family Restaurant in Swift Current.

"Covid hasn't given us the ability to put money on the side, it's just given us the ability to make it by," he explained.

If not for the removal of the proof of vaccination requirements province-wide, Kanakis said he was about two to three months from having to dip into his own pocket to keep the business afloat.