Stringer Planning Solutions

[Restaurant Operators]
Preparing to Serve Post-COVID Shutdown

States have started allowing restaurants and bars to reopen post-quarantine. A key aspect of every business recovery strategy is the re-opening process, when operators are often too excited to re-launch and errors resulting from in-experienced or "out-of-practice" staff can unfold. To avoid garnering a poor reputation, or the "that place isn't what it used to be" title, bars and restaurants should consider a soft-opening as these first few days are critical for a business' long term survival. This pandemic has had the largest impact within service industries, and many of these businesses want a return to "normalcy" as soon as possible. However, restaurants and bars have always relied heavily on their word-of-mouth reputations and repeat customers. Customers have recently been starved of their "dining out" experience, and will likely be clamoring at the opportunity to eat outside of their own home. For a business operator this is an opportunity for your restaurant or bar to create a new first-impression, but a bad reopening could carry long-term ramifications.

Businesses should treat this time as they would a "Grand Opening," which generally follows a "Soft Opening." Many bars and restaurants maintain customer lists, which include emails and/or cell numbers of their regular patrons. Before reopening to the general public, take this opportunity to provide a "soft opening," reach out to your regular customers and describe the event as an opportunity to get your staff and management up to par with the new requirements imposed post-quarantine. By offering substantial discounts in exchange for feedback, you can get your staff retrained while mitigating the risks associated with a substandard reopening event.

Including your most loyal customers in this process can give them a sense of ownership, which will likely create a more patient clientele for the first few days while your management handles any of the normal errors which tend to occur throughout soft opening. Not to mention, feedback at a time like this is more valuable than ever. Plenty of things can be overlooked, as we're all generally bent on a return to "normalcy," new and hopefully profitable insight can be applied to your process even before your "Grand Reopening."

The world is focused on Covid-19. Therefore, the world is focused on social distancing and self-quarantine. This is the right approach for this emergency. However, other emergencies don’t take a holiday because of the virus. It is springtime in the U.S. This means in the Midwest; we are in flood and tornado season. By June the coast will be in hurricane season, and the west coast is always in earthquake season. A common response requirement for all of these issues is mass sheltering. How do we plan for mass sheltering while maintaining a social distancing strategy?

During the gas explosion recovery in Massachusetts in 2018, mass camper trailer parks were set up that supported over 2000 evacuees with each family staying in a single trailer; a trailer neighborhood as it were. The sites were developed in local parks. For that event food was prepared and delivered to food tents where residents would come in and pick up their meals. However, keeping in the spirit of current social distancing efforts, the meals could be delivered from a central location to doorsteps. Because of unknown utility status, these neighborhoods would potentially require generators and mass quantities of bottled water as well.

Coastal communities may not have the needed infrastructure following a hurricane; however, cruise ships could be used for isolating families by cabin. They were used successfully during Katrina. The cruise ships aren’t making voyages now, and they have self-contained power and food preparation.

I’m sure there are other unique strategies for dealing with mass sheltering operations during this crisis. This post is just meant to start the conversation. Though we can hope for a quiet flood, tornado and hurricane season, as the length of the Covid 19 isolation continues, we must be ready to respond to other events without compromising the effort already put into defeating this virus.

Dirk Stringer
Former USCG Captain
Stringer Planning Solutions

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