As restaurants and bars return their operations in various regions of the United States and the entire planet, there are laid out considerations for ways in which operators should protect and delay the spread of COVID-19 to staff, consumers, and communities.
In partnership with state and local health authorities, restaurants, and bars will decide when and how to incorporate these considerations. Making changes to suit the local community’s needs and circumstances.
Implementation should be driven by viable, realistic, relevant, and personalized to each community’s needs. How will they up their guards amid the global pandemic? Here are a few guides.
Observe and Speak-up
This pandemic requires a new protocol to maintain the restaurant and bar operators, staff, and consumers’ safety. Take part to see how the restaurant industry as a whole takes its changes.
The protocols are made in partnership with health organizations and restaurant owners. There will be regular meetings, to observe the day-to-day situations in your workplace, and speak-up with your colleagues during the sessions.
Being in a resilient industry, new and significant things must come out as the pandemic continues to create more safe, cautious, and effective systems.
Spend Less Time with the Tables
If you are a server, 70% of the time of your shift is spent at tables. As part of the whole restaurant experience, you opt to make sure to be available for the guests and even socialize with regular customers you have become friends with.
But now you should spend less time at the tables for you to reduce the face-to-face risks of COVID-19. Try to stand as far back from the tables as possible, while making sure to give the customers the experience they’re coming out to have.
But take precautions, the customers have to remove their masks, and you only get to keep yours. Most from the service industry tend to be too accommodating with customers sometimes and with comes the possibility of a genuine threat that is unseen.
Don’t Bend the Rules, No Matter What
During this crisis, such rules and systems are built to save lives, wear masks, wear gloves, keep a practice of washing our hands. Rules are there to minimize the risk of spreading the virus inside the restaurant.
Be strict with social distancing. Customers continuously want the rules bent to their satisfaction — which everyone can relate to, but you don’t have to be put into that position.
Tough decisions have been made to implement such precautions and let customers know their limits regarding what the staff can do for them.
Don’t Go Straight Home
After the end of every shift, don’t go straight home. If there is an available shower, take a shower and put everything away in a plastic bag, your apron, your uniform, and your gloves. Change to a new set of clothes before heading home.
It can be an extra job for you when you are all exhausted, but it can freshen you up and worry-free. A simple sanitizer is not enough to wash up all the contact you have afflicted the entire day.
This will also make you feel sure that the threat ends where you work, and keep a well-sanitized home.
Practice Good Coping and Resilience
Conducting daily personal health checks is essential. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle while serving tables during the pandemic requires extra work; drink your vitamins, eat healthy, sleep early, and follow hygiene protocols.
Yes, physical health is vital, but mental health? More so. Find time to a pause and unwind. Try meditation and speak to colleagues or friends you trust about your concerns and how you are feeling.
More than ever, as professionals from the restaurant industry, they ought to receive the same level of consideration, deference, and courtesy that they extend to others.
Conclusion
Yes, the organizations may have figured out how to reopen restaurants safely, but economic security for workers and restaurant owners must be part of the industry’s equation to have a sustainable future.
While waiting for the new system taking care of one’s self is vital. Optimum health and precautions must also come from you.
Also read – Tips for Getting Back to Business After the Pandemic