How Restaurants are Dealing with Social Distancing during COVID-19
The world has changed before a few months when COVID-19 was declared as a pandemic officially in the year 2020. People all over the world have been locked inside their homes to practice social distancing, encouraged to use masks, and wash hands frequently to prevent the spreading of coronavirus.
The fast people started taking precautions and started isolating themselves; faster the restaurant industry sales started dropping. Going to dine-out in restaurants was the first thing people eliminated from their schedule. This happened because everything was being locked down and restaurants too were closed by the Government as they have no options left to slow the spread of the disease.
Restaurants owners had to find new ways to deal with the coronavirus and stay safe and at the same time look for new ways to do their business also. Few ways that restaurant owners can adopt to deal with social distancing during COVID-19 are as follows:
- Be Informed: The first thing that is of utmost importance is staying informed. Although it is not necessary that all the information that is floating around is true and useful, knowing what is going around you is useful for you to make the correct decisions for your business as well as for yourself. Staying informed is also important so that you are well aware of the various Government regulations and guidelines issued or amended by the Government time-to-time.
- Limiting your Restaurant Capacity: To prevent the spread of coronavirus and practice social distancing restaurants worldwide are limiting their capacity to half by their own choice or enforced by the Government. This basically means that restaurants can only allow less than 50% or 50% but not more than that of seating of their whole restaurant capacity so that the social distance can be maintained and there is more space between the diners so that spread of coronavirus can be prevented. The idea of reducing the capacity to half is not only in the restaurant business but also for the other businesses like grocery, gyms, drug stores so that there is no crowd anywhere.
- Take Care of Your Staff: The time of this pandemic that started in this year is of course a tough and scary time for every person but the business owners must understand that they have more responsibility towards their staff in this tough time. The reason is that staff members look at their managers and owners for guidance and answers to their questions when they are in trouble or face some kind of problems in their office work so in this uncertain situation they will definitely expect support and guidance from the owners and managers.
Restaurant owners should also take steps to take care of their working team and make sure that they feel safe and secure with you in this difficult time. Restaurant owners can do this by lending financial support to their staff by compensating teams for lost hours due to temporary shut down and those who cannot afford to support their staff financially they can at least look for something to keep their employees safe.
Few restaurants are giving the leftover food to their staff, some are allowing their front desk staff to work as a delivery person to ensure that they can have a continuous flow of income while there is no other work for them as people are not coming to dine in.
No matter how difficult the situation is, if you do small things for them they will feel that you are on their side giving them support which will eventually help you gain trust and respect of employees working with you. - Innovate your services for contactless offerings: The best way to attract customers and make them safe is contactless procedures. Customers will feel secure when there are fewer human interactions. Many restaurant innovate their offerings by putting a big digital food menu in their restaurant instead of a paper menu. Put QR codes on counter & tables so that customers can place orders directly through QR enabled food menu system they even not to install mobile apps in their smartphone. Using the same QR code they can order food from their homes or office for takeaway or delivery.
Many restaurants adapt digital food menu tablet systems on each table so that customers can come and place their favorite order from table without any interaction with your water staff. - Offering Take-away, Curbside, and Delivery Service: There has been substantial growth in the take-away, curbside pick up since the coronavirus outbreak has happened because people prefer to maintain social distance, avoid human interaction as much as possible. In this situation, when sitting areas are completely closed down and if open than that too with many restrictions take-away or curbside pick-up or delivery service is the only option to survive.
Small businesses in fact are dependent on the delivery services only to make-up for their lost business. Many online food delivery apps have included an option of contact delivery in which the delivery person keeps your order at a clean place outside your door and from there you can pick your order.
Many apps like Swiggy, Zomato are using this option and people are using it as it is safe for their health. Many restaurant owners are offering curbside pickup to reduce human interaction. Customers are able to order their food through their mobile devices by using a white-labeled restaurant mobile app or a QR enabled food ordering website, make payment for the order and select in delivery option curbside pickup. After selecting curbside pickup the customer can drive to the restaurant’s parking area and the delivery staff will deliver their meal to their car. This whole process involves very little or we can say no direct touch with any human.
- There should be Clear Communication with the Customers: It is very important for the restaurant owners to clearly inform your customers whether you are open or closed completely, offering dine-in with limited capacity or only offering food delivery services. Keep your customers informed about everything through emails, updating on websites, or through social media posts because nobody wants to leave their home just to know whether you are open or not. Keep your customers engaged with you in this difficult time as through various methods like posting blogs, articles, etc. so that they can feel valued and informed and you can retain them for a long time.
- Offering Deferred Dine-in to Customers: Restaurants across the country are struggling to sustain themselves since the coronavirus outbreak has started. They are finding new ways how they can keep their cash flow alive. Restaurants are offering customers to purchase gift cards or bonds which they can use later in order to keep their cash flow going. These pre-sales are useful for restaurants who are struggling hard in this situation of maintaining social distance as these will help to get instant cash flow as well as surety of having some business after the situation returns to normal or some relaxation is provided by the law.
Some restaurant owners still have to temporarily close their restaurants due to extreme financial crisis or in some areas because of Government regulations due to which dining-in is completely banned and practice social distancing is must, to reduce the spread of COVID-19; they can take the benefit of various Government schemes to survive and most importantly stay positive.
