6 FT
Companies Emphasize Safety First as Dining Rooms Reopen by Sean Ireland
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2020 Issue 3 |
THE
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o one ever said owning a small business was easy, but with hard work, focus, passion and a little luck, many find entrepreneurship to be fulfilling and rewarding. Of course, there are always obstacles to success, but in 2020, the challenges have gone far beyond what any small-business owner reasonably expects to face in a year. The difficulties brought to bear on the restaurant industry by the coronavirus pandemic have been particularly heavy. COVID-19 and the corresponding government-mandated closures and restrictions on dine-in operations have caused more disruption of this industry than perhaps any other, save for fitness clubs and hair salons. Buffalo Wild Wings® franchisees have been stung particularly hard. The closures of their dining rooms forced them to quickly ramp-up takeout operations without the benefit of a drive-thru lane and limited staff experience for working with customers that way. Mastering that, there was then the challenge of developing new procedures for safely reopening dining rooms and getting their teams trained to execute them. Of course, nearly six months into the pandemic, not all states had allowed restaurants to open their dining rooms, and in most places where they were open, there were restrictions on how many guests could be served as part of the regimen to ensure safety from the coronavirus. Operating within those restrictions was one piece of the puzzle that restaurants were faced with solving to get eat-in service restarted. BWW® franchisees are quickly putting the pieces together, however. Groups such as High 5 Hospitality and World Wide Wings (WWW) have taken guidance from health officials, the
franchisor and other experts and combined it with their own operational acumen to develop practices that keep dining rooms sanitized and socially distanced and give employees and guests confidence that they are safe. “Our franchise focus, from the beginning of the pandemic, has always been the safety of our team members and guests,” said Jimmy Calo, a California district manager for World Wide Wings, which has 67 BWW locations in seven states. “As such, our reopening guidelines were developed with strict adherence to all federal, state and local guidelines. Our locations have reopened on the side of caution and have ensured that our sports bars and teams are hyper-focused on maintaining a safe dining environment.” That is the guiding philosophy behind the practices that have been developed to prevent the spread of COVID-19. WWW made changes to floor plans by putting some tables into storage and adding space between others. The company retooled server support stations to accommodate additional tools and supplies for dining, including single-use utensils and condiments. It’s also added sanitation stations in strategic locations. In California, the company has had to move all dine-in business to seating outside the sports bar, a monumental task that required equipment rentals, retooling of audio and visual systems, and additional safety and sanitation measures. “The biggest changes during round one of reopening have been the reduced seating capacity and the additional procedures necessary for sanitation for COVID-19,” Calo said. “The reduced
