It is ABC Consulting’s sincere hope that you and your family are staying healthy and safe as our nation copes with the COVID-19 outbreak. ABC Consulting will continue to keep you informed of any changes that will affect your business and alcohol sales. This unprecedented health crisis has caused many hardships and challenges, but what has been truly inspiring and heartening is to see the outpouring of community support of our local restaurants! How will you turn that community spirit towards YOUR business, once we have been given the green light towards re-opening our dining rooms?
We know what most of our clients are doing during this pandemic and we’ve watched as many Virginia businesses have changed and re-changed their game plan. Some have closed their doors. Some continue to operate with curbside pickup and delivery and are somehow still breaking even. We admire the flexibility and the tenacity of our community. We care for the hospitality community and we know you are all wondering what happens when the new, NEW normal happens? When our businesses are given the green light, we will have to ‘re-open’ with much more transparency. How will your business re-open? What are you focused on NOW, while you are closed to the public. What is your game plan? Here are our ideas:
- You want your old customers to step into your restaurant with confidence. How will you give them that confidence to re-establish new visiting patterns, once this is over?
- You’ll need to highlight your enhanced sanitation measures – and you’ll need to really deep clean the entire establishment. Here is our checklist and schedule.
- Instead of who has the best burger in town, it will be who has the cleanest restaurant in town. Make sure the public knows how clean you are (photos and social media).
- Kitchens that are open for customer viewing should be highlighted and used as a marketing tool so people can see how clean the kitchen is. For non-open kitchens, consider putting a camera in the kitchen with a monitor in the dining room.
- Consider, at least temporarily) disposable/recyclable menus- these one-time use menus can literally be crumbled up and thrown away in front of the customer for added confidence.
- Cover your order tablets – if you leave Tablets on tables, recover them with saran wrap after each customer places their order.
- Be very open with your sanitizing procedures. Show a fast-speed video of cleaning with a strong cleaner – or advertise a special brand of soap that is being used.
- Create cute videos or even full-length “How To” Videos of how their employees wash hands (the proper way – the medical way).
- Show short videos of what they are doing to be ready to re-open: resurfacing the bar, giving everything a fresh coat of paint, cleaning and polishing all kitchen hoods, changing kitchen flooring, etc.
- If you have participated in donating food or supplies, tell the community.
- If you have fed hospital workers or first responders, take a photo and post.
- If you are offering discounts to any group (hospital workers, first responders, etc), tell the world.
- Make sure you make a big splash when you re-open and post it on any and all social-media sites with any specials or changes in that marketing (including address and phone and menu link).
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