How restaurants can thrive in the next normality

An important discovery that the pandemic might have confirmed is that a society cannot do without restaurants. Even though every home might possess its cooking utensils, the issue of having to eat out is of importance to society as the food itself is of importance to the people.

No doubt some foodservice businesses have been adversely affected by the Covid-19 outbreak, even with the availability of vaccines, the delta variant and others still a threat to the extent that some have run out of business while others are temporarily closed. For those still running, either flourishing or struggling, here are some ways to stay in business during this pandemic.

Prioritize cleanliness and maintain hygiene

Restaurants owners are to ensure that their environment stays clean always. Giving customers the sense of safety in your restaurant will involve you making them feel at home by keeping your environment clean, providing sanitizers, keeping the floor sparkling, providing a well-maintained air filter system, ensuring that all your workers are always masked up, and ensuring that the tables are well spaced out. With this and many more in place, you can guarantee that your customers will keep coming back.

With social distancing maintained, ensure you run at maximum possible capacity

Even when the rules state that the maximum capacity you are allowed to function at is a percentage of your normal (full) capacity, you should optimize your in-dining services by working out a feasible plan that makes your available seats in use every hour for which you are opened.

In areas where there are no curfews or restrictions to hours of business, keep your restaurant running for as many hours as your staff strength can accommodate. With this, you will be able to serve more customers over a longer period even with the reduced sitting capacity of your facilities.

Diversify your services

If, before the pandemic, you only offered dine-in services, one possible way to leverage on the possible losses from the reduced capacity to run, is to incorporate additional services such as outdoor restaurant, home and office delivery, online purchases among others. Anything to keep the profit margin intact. Other than that, with this diversification, you keep your esteemed staff members, your customers are retained and you keep the business running.

Focus on customer satisfaction

The last thing a restaurant wants to do is to put up a shameful PR. At such a time as this, customers’ attitude to the hitherto usual things may now be different. They may become touchy, grumpy or hard to satisfy due to their pandemic experiences. Do not leave your customers dissatisfied on any occasion.

Stay creative

By providing quality services both for your on-site and off-site customers. Set up a customer management system that among other things caters for their ordering, delivering, customer service, payment, and complaint enquiries. Ensure that your services impress them by leaving a good review to improve your online presence.

Something more cheering however is the availability of covid-19 vaccines now in most countries. With this, the struggle might just be over soon, and restaurants operators can now hope that the restrictions in the number of people in public spaces and spacing requirements will be relaxed soon enough. They can as well look forward to running at their full capacity in the nearest future as herd immunity against the virus is achieved. But just before then keep thinking out of the box to ensure the survival of your business while the pandemic lasts, specially considering the new variants.