A Foodie shares tips for Restaurants dealing with the COVID-19 Virus
Social distancing will affect your favorite restaurants
There are a few suggestions that all businesses should consider, to reassure their shoppers that they’re safe, especially in the food industry. The new social distancing standards are now forcing restaurants to move solely to delivery and takeout. Let’s face it, it’s not the most appealing concept to consider that going out to eat at any restaurant could actually get you sick. Let’s NOT go out to the pub or take the family to crowded restaurants, as suggested by Rep. Devin Nunes. The CDC as well as the latest government guidelines suggest avoiding groups of 10 or more!
So here are 3 suggestions from this Foodie that all restaurants can use to make customers feel a little safer.
Reassure your customers on food preparation from farm to table
As a foodie, lunch and dinner are often when my family eats out. So it’s been quite an adjustment for us retraining our patterns like everyone else in America.
Cafe Rio is one of our favorite restaurants. They connected to their customers by sending out notifications on how food preparation is being handled going forward in the midst of this Coronavirus COVID-19 epidemic. What’s crazy is that there’s only one or two other restaurants that I have frequented that have created emails and text messages to customers something like this!
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Take a Foodie’s suggestion!
Share what you are doing to ensure that your customers are safe in food preparation. Follow the lead of this email attached below and you’ll see an absolutely brilliant way of reassuring your customer base of your commitment to their safety.
Understanding how food is prepared, and what steps have been instituted to ensure the proper handling, preparation and delivery to your customer from farm to plate, reassures your customers and keeps them ordering!
Customers LOVE TAKEOUT! The CDC will require this anyway very soon
Consider offering pick up and delivery exclusively, current guidelines in New York and San Francisco are following those requirements.
Social distancing has become part of our daily lives now, and one of the scariest parts about going out as a family is that you could be using unclean utensils, or brushing up with people that are sick or what’s scarier, people that are asymptomatic and look totally fine! If I knew that a restaurant would allow pick up through a window and I trust them with an email as suggested above, I would greatly consider frequenting that restaurant. For a foodie, you need your Food fix!
With your new standards of safety in place, ask your customers to share that and review your preparation
So you’ve instituted all these changes in your business, your restaurant now is creating a safer environment not just for the customers, but also the employees, employees have been retrained on the new standards in place by the CDC. That’s wonderful, but if nobody else knows that then you’re still stagnant. As a small business, now more than ever because of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) we have to enlist our customers and our marketing plan. Reach out to your customer base and ask them to share their experiences with your new changes in food preparation and delivery. Send out a blast to your customers saying.. “We need your help, share your experience about our company, let your friends know what we’re doing, and what we are changing”.
A little personal responsibility saves lives and businesses
Safety is everything during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, as American citizens, we’ve gone through trying times that only bring us closer. In the midst of all this, everyone should know that personally, we’re responsible to ensure that if we are sick, that we should self quarantine for the sake of our families.
Although our leaders are not the best examples right now, we can be ourselves, for our community, and for the small businesses that depend on us within our cities and towns.
Remember, we are the ones that will save small business, not a bail out by the government. Small business loans will be used to simply survive. It is the community that will keep a business running. Help them with suggestions that you feel will make it safer for you to continue to support them.
So, if you find a restaurant that’s taking the steps to ensure our safety and going the extra mile, share what you know about that small business.
