How to prepare for the next normal: Road Map. Decision making. New normal during the Covid-19 pandemic

A road map. From new normal to the next normal.

A successful metamorphosis requires the caterpillar to have all necessary weight to go through and become a butterfly. It is not 2 different species, but the same animal in two different stages, with different goals and different “packaging”.

Our businesses are like that; we already have all the necessary supplies to thrive, but we need to get the experience needed for the next stage, because as the Monarch Butterfly, businesses go through an endless cycle of journeys, hardship endurance and resilience building metamorphosis.

We want to start where we left it in the previous post: Awareness is the main and very first step we need to make if we want to have the expected growth.

The awareness is related not only to the surroundings of our business, which we already broadly discussed (see here).  It is also, and most important, being conscious and comprehend how we are going to use the tools and knowledge we have within our own company. These tools might vary from talented or organized people to motivated employees, a good concept or product, a great packaging, practices our teams do (consciously or unconsciously) or a community that supports the business, engagement with service or products providers. There are endless possibilities, but they all have a common characteristic:  they lead to success!

Being aware of those practices or strengths will be the key during this metamorphosis.  They will allow businesses to focus their efforts while road mapping through the new normal to the next normal.

Main topics to consider during the road mapping during the new normal

In the foodservice industry, especially on the operators end, and under the current circumstances, businesses need to focus efforts in the Awareness stage on at least the following: Personnel awareness, Customer Value, and Logistics. Those are critical parts when considering the mapping towards setting goals

Personnel management during new normal: 

While discussing the need for a leader to be empathetic, we noted that it was needed to have a motivated leader, but also a proactive one in seeking their team’s good health. Most changes occurred in the inside rather than the outside. If there is not real an internal review and metamorphosis, anything planned customers face, will just crumble.

In order to make customers secure and at the same time, reassure in them the feeling of being secure while dining in, businesses need first to expand a safety culture throughout all levels of the organization, from cooking staff, to the stewards, bus person, expediters, to servers and in front of the house management team. Everyone is playing a part, and is needed for a full safety experience.

Businesses need to “walk the talk”; just as leaders must lead by example. Therefore, management needs to focus efforts to have all the team in the same page, motivated and committed to a common goal.

Businesses that are paving their ways to thrive -and not just survive- under these dire circumstances, understood that either relevant nor evident changes would be possible, if safety standards were not adopted into their values. While doing this, the employees, and staff in general:

• Feel their jobs are being recognized.  This motivates them, and they will perform better chores at hand.
• Staff will understand and then develop more efficient ways to take care of customers, engage with them and improve their experience.
• Will raise awareness of the importance to keep teams healthy, which would also transpire to their own families keeping them safe too.

Moreover, keeping the workplace safe and the workforce healthy, will not only reduce risk of your employees to contract the virus during working hours, but also will avoid personnel shortages, calls in sick, and operational disruptions, observing costs of hiring, understaffing and training, as low as possible considering this new normal under and after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Customer Value in the new normal:

The goal is to add value to the customer: safety! Businesses capable to master a safe experience for customers are the ones who will assure future visits and future revenue. Part of the experience and emotions businesses across the spectrum are now trying to capitalize on, are that they are safe places to purchase from. Their goal is to make customers feel a safe experience, engaging in business with them.

It is happening in both retail and grocery stores. It is also happening in the foodservice industry. Businesses don’t want to have their names attached to unfortunate events; they want to have a bond with values such as trust, confidence and safety.

Following the CDC Guidelines will provide a minimum national standard for foodservice operators. But would it be enough under a continuing influx of stress about the Covid-19 pandemic development? We believe it is necessary to think on the businesses as temporarily layers of available engagement with customers, as restrictions of shelter in place might affect the business area. This means to be ready to operate under the most restrictive of the circumstances, and to add levels for the following engagement stages according to Government recommendations or regulations, and the own business guidelines.

The cautious approach: Under current circumstances being over cautious will help if it does not interfere with your business. Moreover, it will help you mastering the most restrictive scenario plus, it will allow customers to understand the new experience of dinning away from home. Some fast food operators for example -although they are allowed to have dine in patrons- have chosen not to open their restaurants but to focus on the curbside and when available, the drive thru. This approach of doing business in the most restrictive scenario, seems like it is paying those restaurants in building the new safe experience with lesser contact and exposure, while patrons still go out and eat away from home.

Certainly, adding points: Customers assess places they could go and feel safe. Although, there is still too much to learn from the virus, how it behaves and how it can be controlled; there are a few things that are not changing: the feeling of having contact and exposure. That fear is one of the experiences that drives away restaurant’s customers.  Then, restaurants will need to get rid of it if they want not only new businesses from new patrons, but also and specially, returning patrons.

Knowing that contact and exposure are key drivers in customers decision making, businesses in order to regain the trust of each customer, should consider some more visible changes, such as:  contactless menus, factual distancing among tables, foot doors knobs, and visually evident cleaning and safe practices among others. All these will score points on customers evaluation when deciding where to head to, next time they are dinning away from home.

Communication: business must reshape their communication strategy, and re balance their content on digital platforms. Customers are spending increasing time in front of their device’s screens seeking information. Businesses are doing a huge work to keep both personnel and customers as their top priorities. Why not showing to customers and potential customers? Sales have a sentiment component, and the work done by businesses to keep customers and employees safe need to be speak out and loudly. Customers are seeking to have a safe experience such as the one many operators are already providing.

Important to notice that social media platforms don’t belong to food service operators -especially those operators relying on social media platforms as their main communication channel-, thus, they can and will change, and could be taken away from businesses, loosing not only the database, but time and efforts invested on building the community around the business through those social media platforms. Building up a database will help companies to preserve communication in a much more personal way with customers, and directly deliver their message regardless their social media strategy.

Logistics. Receiving and delivering in new normal

Decisions need to be made considering: Supply chain, Non-Contact service and Food quality.

Good bonds, great relationships with suppliers: it is inevitable that we will see new supply chain shortages, and therefore both impossibilities to secure needed goods and/or spikes in pricing of those affected goods. Businesses will need to evaluate who are they partnering with, specially the food service distributors, since depending on their approach and the measures they are now setting, it is likely those important players will behave in the near future.

We see with great admiration how some important foodservice distribution players are corresponding their customers by focusing their efforts to secure the supplies needed by their clients, and whenever the disruption affects them, they source for and find equivalent goods to provide. It sounds simple, but it is a titanic work required to make it happen.

Partnering with Food Service distributors who has a professional consulting service component attached to the distribution service has proven a major advantage. For many small and medium operators, their partnership with their distribution service provider has made the difference between closing their doors or working throughout this pandemic.

Omnichannel Sales. Modalities available: we see a surge of different modalities for foodservice businesses to take out, self-delivery; delivery platforms, to-go, pick-up, curbside. Businesses are looking for ways to be able to deliver in a to-go environment.

The most successful so far, are those businesses that do understand who their customers are, and their purchase patterns.

It would be important, if businesses do not have it yet, to start building up their own and privately-owned customer database, since as we mentioned above, it will be the foundational rock to your communication strategy.

There are many popular apps that would allow you to enter the basics of the to-go, delivery solutions. Moreover, there are also local startups providing web-based selling and distribution services for local business within the boundaries of local communities, creating a community for supporting local small business.

Focus on experience away from restaurant: most of food service businesses are focused on the experience of eating away from home. The shift now is that such experience needs a twist: Eating away from home food away from restaurant.

It is not the same when a customer is dinning in than when a customer is having the meal away from the restaurant. Is the garnish the business adds to its dishes keeping its shape, freshness and beauty? Is the meal still good if microwave is used for reheating? Is the product going to hold and keep its shape after traveling in the to-go container?

There will be no cautious waitress serving the meal, nor it is going to be eaten right away once the customer receives it.  Moreover, the meal is traveling under unknown conditions and it is likely that will be eaten no less than 20 min after preparation, or while in the vehicle.

There is no manager available to catch up with a dissatisfying experience before it sinks into the customer’s mind.

Businesses need to foresight and be prepared for the worst, thinking on the experience the customer will have once he unwraps the meal.

Business will have to rethink and reassess their menus, to make sure each item on the menu makes sense in a to-go environment.

Keep safe.