Top 10 Ways for Restaurants to Reduce the Impact of COVID-19

Due to the widespread epidemic, as a restaurant owner, you must be struggling to find new customers and maintaining the regular one. Among all this, your priority obviously would be the safety of your place and the workforce, as they are your ultimate magnet attracting customers to your business.

This article encapsulates all the minor as well as major tips and strategies your business should incorporate to drive revenue from wherever possible, right from handling your operations with precautions to promoting your services.

The tips and strategies unfold as follows:

1. Take Measures to Make your Restaurant Feel Like a Safe Spot

First and foremost you can do is to take measures to make your customers feel safe about your place and services. To do so,

· Sanitize your restaurant frequently, especially the cash counter and the kitchen
· Equip your staff with anti-bacterial gloves and face masks.
· Take intensive care of all the surfaces that are often touched by distinct members in the premises like switches, doors and drawer’s handles etc.

Take all the essential precautions to make your restaurant infection-free.

All these would not be enough for a continuous trade flow, you also need to let your customers know that you are taking all the necessary measures to keep your place safe from the novel coronavirus. Spread the news about your sincere care towards your customers, showcase your measures and attempts on social media platforms. Doing all these would create a sense of safety among your customers and they would prefer your place for their next order above others.

2. Take Good Care of your Staff

Communities are highly dependent on the food workers and their services who keep the country and the economy going during such hard times. As the level of precautionary measures elevates, and social distancing comes into serious practising, has changed the customer’s behaviours of expecting the food to be offered in a different way i.e. either in the form of takeout or home delivery.

Taking good care of your team would help your business last in such an epidemic. Your worker needs your strong support now, more than ever. Following things you can do for your staff members to survive the situation:

· Offer paid sick leave and ask to stay home if they show COVID-19 symptoms
· Give them anti-bacterial hand gloves and face masks
· Communicate and update your employees about the crises, motivate them and ask them to keep calm.
· Ask your staff to practice cleanliness frequently
· Use technology to keep them safe, For instance, use online payment methods in place of cash exchange, to avoid physical contact.
· Promote mental health and try to keep your staff stress free, and happy

3. Look for Cost-saving Opportunities

Taking the essential and effective measure to help your restaurant continue the business is a challenging task. Below are some suggestions that can help with cost-saving.

Food Cost Savings: You can start with temporarily discarding a few items from your menu list. To do so, check out your latest sales history from the Point-of-Sale (POS) data to separate the menu items that are ordered less from the ones which are sold more, and take decisions accordingly.

You can Partner with Nearby Restaurants: Collaborate with the restaurant near you and share your resources, staff, and kitchen space with them to offer more quality service in less expenditure. At this time of global crisis, there is no completion, we all are struggling together for survival.

Stay Updated to Avail Assistance: Stay updated about all the schemes that the government launches to benefit the small and medium business during the pandemic. Whenever that happens be sure to avail any kind of help provided for your business.

4. Communicate with your Guests

As restaurant professionals are struggling in moving their business model forward, many of their guests are still looking for ways to support their favourite restaurant business. Analysing the current circumstances, it is important for you to directly reach out to your customers via distinct mediums like website, social media platforms, Google my business, email marketing etc. to transmit any changes you may be making, like following the WHO guidelines amid the COVID-19 to encourage support and empathy in such hard times.

Following are the ways with which you can encourage your customers to do business with your brand without having to step on your doorstep:

· Ask for their support and address that it is different from the usual business.
· Assure them that you u are employing utmost care
· Outline the extra safety measures and cleaning protocol your place has taken
· Offer takeout or away, so that your precious clients do not have to step out from their houses.
· Finally, thank and appreciate them for their support and time.

Driving Revenue During Coronavirus

5. Invest More Resources in Marketing

Investing your funds on a booking platform is the beginning. But to divert more traffic towards your brand, you need to reach out to the customers via creative ways, by all possible means.

Social Media Campaigns

Use social media platforms to stay at the top among your followers, make sure that your most regular and loyal customers know that you are open. Post about all the precautionary measures you are taking and inform them of any upcoming event, you are planning.

Email Marketing

Emails are a substantial medium to reach out to your customers. If you have the email id’s of your guests, send them the information about any ongoing or upcoming activity at your place. The more personal the email, the better! By doing so, they might accept your invitation, and join you for a safe experience.

Market Gift Cards

Vend your consumers with gift cards for future dining experiences, as these will help your customers to plan a future with your restaurant, once things fall back into place. You can also promote gift cards as a community-minded business to your loyal customers who are eager to offer a helping hand to their favourite restaurant with the cash flow.

6. Enable Home Delivery or Takeout Options

Due to the epidemic, your customer can not reach out of their homes to enjoy your services. This time, why don’t you reach out to them to offer your services? This quarantine, make different versions of your food for families to enjoy at home. Enable home delivery and takeout services at your restaurant, considering your customer’s safety as a priority.

Take extra measures and extra sanitization to keep the food box closed properly, double-sealed, and disinfected. Train your staff to handle home delivery with the utmost precautions. Follow the guidelines suggested by WHO amid novel coronavirus to deliver safe hand home delivery and takeout services.

7. Bare-shelf Cooking Classes

Once or twice in a week, do some cooking workshops with your chefs to inspire some creative dishes. Because there might be a possibility that your business is running on limited groceries, and your restaurant is limited with some traditional dishes. People get usually tired of preparing the same repetitive dishes, thus cooking workshops will keep inspiring your cooks to deliver the best every single time they cook.

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When Things Start Rolling Again…

8. Coach your Staff to Deal with Sick Customers

In addition to sanitizing everything at your place, you also need to train your staff to handle a situation where they encounter a customer possessing COVID-19 symptoms. Ask your staff to compulsory check the temperature of every guest entering. Moreover, teach your staff what to do when they witness a guest sneezing or coughing inside the premises. Few things which can be done are as follows:

· Equip your staff with protective self-care equipment.
· Provide your guest with sanitizer or other disinfectants immediately
· Swiftly bring tissue paper at the spot.
· Offer medical resources immediately.
· Sanitize the area covered or touched by the guest
· Keep your healthy guests away from the scene

9. Conduct Thermal Screening on Each of your Guests

Opportune and accurate monitoring of people suffering from fever in public and shared spaces can play a vital role in prohibiting the spreading and ensuring constructive infection control. The apparatus evaluates the body temperature, using a camera that spots infrared emitted by the people and objects.

Advantages of thermal screening:

· Pocket friendly
· No physical contact, thus avoid cross-contamination
· The process leads to minimal psychological impact and negative emotions
· Data collection for effective response and tracking, if required

10. This Too shall Pass – Have Faith

No matter how difficult the circumstances get, if we all stand together and help each other, we will survive this. Do not lose hope-

· Keep practising social distancing
· Keep working
· Support your country’s economy
· Support local businesses
· Wash your hand frequently
· Avoid touching your eyes, mouth and nose.
· Stay home-stay safe!

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