Best Practices For Weathering A Second COVID Wave

A second wave of coronavirus infections is not inevitable for the United States, health authorities say, but they point to history and what’s happening elsewhere in the world as strong proof of the possibility. Recent spikes in new COVID-19 cases in Europe, Asia and Australia have led some leaders there to declare their nations are already in that secondary onslaught. Meanwhile, officials of U.S. states have hypothesized that fall and winter weather will lead to more congregating indoors, undercutting social distancing. Ditto for the reopening of schools, colleges and universities. They point to what happened at newly reopened institutions such as the University of Alabama, where 560 students and staff members tested positive for COVID-19 within the first week of the new semester. That led to the shutdown of bars and a suspension of restaurant bar service in Tuscaloosa, home to one of the university’s three campuses.

As operators in California have attested, secondary dining-room shutdowns can be devastating, with supply purchases and restaffing efforts largely squandered because of on-premise sales being re-flattened. But the shock is likely not as crippling as it was back in March and April when restaurateurs were thrown into a completely novel situation.  This time around, they can draw on what they’ve learned from the first COVID wave.

Here are some of the effective strategies and tactics we’ve encountered in covering the restaurant industry’s claws-out struggle over the last five months.

Reconsider the no work/no job/no pay mindset
Restaurateurs might have laughed off the heresy back in February of keeping employees on the payroll when there was no need for their labor. More recent months have shown a definite correlation between maintaining employer-employee relations and quickly ramping a chain’s sales back to levels where units are profitable again.