Government-imposed lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic forced several dining businesses to close down temporarily. As official stay-at-home orders restricted people from going outdoors, many restaurants suffered heavy losses.
Fortunately, the curve has now started to flatten, and government officials have eased the lockdown. As life slowly begins to return to normal, you can start planning to reopen your restaurant.
Here are some steps that you should take to keep your dining business safe post-COVID-19.
1. Disinfect Your Space
The first step to ensure that your dining business remains safe is to thoroughly disinfect your space. To thoroughly sanitize your restaurant, start by creating a restaurant cleaning checklist.
This should include all the spots in your restaurant that need to be cleaned. While restrooms and kitchens are obvious places to clean, waste disposal areas and trash cans should also be properly disinfected. Install sanitizer dispensers at key spots in your restaurant, such as the entry point, dining tables, etc.
2. Check Your Ingredients
Before you start serving customers, make sure that your food inventory is fresh. If there’s any item in your fridge expired or has been damaged by pests, discard it immediately. If you are running short on any essential ingredient, get in touch with your vendors and ask them if they have enough supplies to meet your requirements.
3. Train Your Employees
Training your staff requires time and effort. It is crucial to make sure that your employees comply with the rules. You also need to educate them, so they know why they have to take these extra precautions.
Regularly follow-up with your staff to make sure that they are keeping up with the protocol. To make your dining business safe, you should also provide all your staff members with gloves, face masks, hairnets, and aprons.
4. Avoid Using Cash
Going cashless is one of the key ways to ensure that your dining business remains safe. A cashless transaction will minimize physical contact and reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. While many countries already have cashless transaction systems in place, other countries such as Thailand prefer cash to make payments. Opt for the former.
5. Implement Social Distancing Measures
If you have a self-service counter, set up barriers and floor placements that allow customers to maintain a 6 feet distance. Also, reduce the number of tables in your dining area so that customers do not have to sit close to each other.
Make sure that once a customer leaves, you thoroughly sanitize the table before the next one comes in. Adding partitions between tables is also a good idea to keep your dining business safe.
Final Word
Implementing the above practices will surely keep your restaurant safe post lockdown. Early planning can give you an edge against your competitor and help you reopen your dining business as soon as possible. You can also review the FDA best practices guidelines to keep your dining business safe post-COVID-19 lockdown.
