Posted on 12, May, 2020
Last Modified on 19, May, 2020
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What To Expect?
As businesses begin to reopen around the country, some are being met with new & unique challenges. Over the last few weeks, business owners and team members have provided us with valuable insights that have helped us to form a few guiding principles that may offer help in navigating new guidelines. These guidelines are aimed at winning you and your customer’s success as you work to find a new center of gravity.
Set expectations early and often
Offer lots of guidance through visual cues. Open and honest communication can ease tension for your guests when available all throughout your location. By providing obvious markers indicating where to stand and how to place an order or by requesting masks or gloves be worn to keep customers and crew safe, you’ll be helping to reduce confusion and set yourself up for a more streamlined and comprehensive process from the get-go.
Tips for success: Use crowd control solutions like stanchions with signage or paneled cafe barriers to ensure lines are clearly set and mark safe distances with floor decals or other visual indicators. A-frame signage can help send the message to keep the line to 1 person deep or ask that friends do not line up side by side in order to reduce crowding.
If you’re only offering curbside pickup, use traffic cones with signage indicators to direct parking or traffic and set up a well-oiled system with folding tables, rollable shelving, and a portable POS system to create an outdoor marketplace to conduct transactions instead of running in and out of your location.
Starting to seat guests on a limited basis? A wheeled podium adorned with a safety screen can be rolled outdoors for greeting customers and ensuring added safety measures upon arrival.
Offer peace of mind with heightened safety measures
Offering protective elements can help inspire confidence that you’re doing everything you can to keep guests and staff safe. There are many who will remain on the fence about leaving their homes despite the desire to seek creature comforts like a new outfit or food from their favorite restaurant. Providing basic protection can help bridge the gap between stay-at-home life and returning to normal
Tips for success: Provide your staff and customers with safeguards like acrylic sneeze barriers and easy-to-clean dispensers for gloves, masks, and hand sanitizer.
Show them love, tons of it.
Post lots of messages of hope and happiness and tell your guests and crew how much you appreciate them. Let’s face it, it takes a real show of faith for any of us to brave the world these days. Sending a message that you’re grateful for your guest’s business or your staff’s hard work can really help build trust during these uncertain times. But don’t only send messages of thanks, inspire hope too; speak often of a bright future ahead! No matter what, HOPE will get us all through! An upbeat and optimistic attitude can do wonders for creating the right atmosphere from a psychological perspective.
Tips for success: Use chalkboard signs or get creative with vibrant printed coroplast or foamcore inserts placed in your customized outdoor sidewalk signs to set the mood while customers wait.
And lastly, remember we’re all in this together and — You’ve. Got. This.