Post-Pandemic Restaurant Trends Archives - Online Ordering For Restaurants | ActiveMenus

7 Ideas for Attracting and Retaining Employees in a Post-COVID-19 World

Ben Beddow — Thu, 19 Aug 2021 02:34:02 +0000

7 Ideas for Attracting and Retaining Employees in a Post-COVID-19 World

Ben Beddow

Published August 18th, 2021

7 Ideas for Attracting and Retaining Employees in a Post-COVID-19 World

The global COVID-19 pandemic hit the restaurant industry and recruitment hard. Since the beginning of the pandemic, restaurants have had to contend with shutdowns, daily changes to rules and restrictions, irate customers, and supply chain worries. The pandemic hasn’t only affected the recruiting and retention of owners and operators of restaurants, it has also severely affected their employees' workforce.

The COVID pandemic gave many people, especially those in lower-paid jobs, one of those jolts which can cause them to rethink their life. Internal restaurant workers fall into this category and an extended period without any income, or any turnover knowledge of when work and income would start back up, had many of these organization workers rethinking their priorities.

Employee and retention shortages are suddenly omnipresent throughout the industry organization, with some locations even forced to close for a few days of the week to ensure they don’t overwork their staff. Attracting new employees is harder than ever and retaining them is just as difficult as it has always been even if they need it. So how does one attract and then retain employees' retention in an industry beset with staff shortages and in need of staff?

Retain Employees' Retention By Higher Wages

In an industry organization that runs on such thin margins talking about raising wages can be a sticky subject. But in an industry where turnovers run at an average annual rate of around 70%, it can pay to pay more. Seeking higher wages today for retention isn’t the only reason employees leave an establishment, nor is it the main one, but in order to keep employees' retention they first need to be hired and a competitive work-based rate is one factor that will bring people in through the door.

Federal Workable Health Insurance and a 401k for Recruitment

Another incentive and strategy for new hires is the availability of health insurance and retirement plans. Neither is obligated under US law but, come federal tax season, companies with 50 or more full-time employees that don’t offer health insurance can receive hefty fines that scale onboarding on a per-employee basis.

Having health insurance can help to set an employee’s mind at ease, and offering them a 401k can show them that their business employer cares more about them than just the hours they can work. Both of these offerings are excellent new retention tools for employees today, especially if a company’s competitors don’t offer them. They can also work as a turnover incentive to stay in a position if the tracking insurance an employee is currently receiving is better than what a potential employer customer is offering and retention in return.

Employee Support for Recruiting Strategies

It is not an unknown fact that substance abuse is prevalent in the restaurant industry. Offering business support for employees is a good strategy for those who suffer from addiction and substance abuse cannot only change the course of their lives but can raise the employee morale, workforce, and retention of a workplace and recruitment, improve an individual’s workforce ethic, and improve all the employees’ opinions of the location and the management. An establishments HR showing that they care can encourage applicants and people to apply because they heard about the caring recruitment work environment of that location.

A manager should also be supporting their employees in the workplace. This stretches from taking their complaints about their fellow employees seriously and dealing with them promptly, to being there to support them when things are hectic and they are into the weeds. Recruitment and retention strategy, having management that will jump into the trenches alongside the organization employees when needed strengthens the bond, experience, and see retention between the team employee and earns the business manager respect where they would otherwise be scorned (behind their back) for not assisting when in need.

Time-Built and Creative Benefits

Employee benefits are excellent, but if they’re all available from the beginning of employment then the employee soon forgets the initial boost of joy and retention they received from them. It is for this reason that many brands, both chains, and single-unit operators, have taken to staggering the implementation of employee benefits. This can be done in numerous ways and many operators say they are getting creative about how they stagger new employees.

Employers are also being creative about strategies on what benefits they offer, with some offering shifts that work around giving employees time off with their children, an employee with a disability, and others choosing to annually share a percentage of their turnover work profits with their competitive new employees, which encourages the employees to bring their A-game every day and to stay around for longer. Recruiting new employers can get creative recruitment by tailoring the benefits they offer to both the need of the employee and the needs of the company and customers in the business.

Scheduling Input Retention

Schedules don’t have to be ridged, they can also be dynamic in the sense that they can change from week to week depending on the employee's need. Employees can’t be allowed to control every element of their schedule —that would cause unmanageable chaos— but allowing the employees to have an input into the planning of their own working week can drastically raise the employees' morale, recruitment, increase their job satisfaction, and improve the employees' business attitude and work ethic harm.

Ideas and Input for Retention

All employees are going to have thoughts and opinions on the location in which they work link experience, from ideas and strategies about the menu items to opinions on the decor; and often these go unheard or, even worse, unsaid. Providing employees solutions with the platform to offer their input on matters relating to a location has benefits for both sides. From the recruiting management’s human perspective, they receive insights from those who are seeing things from a different point of view yet are in the same location every day. From an employee’s perspective, the fact that their opinion is being heard and given weight by management increases their feeling of inclusion and ownership in their workplace, increasing the possibility that they’ll work better and prolong their tenure.

Exit Employment Interviews

Management often discovers recruitment strategy and the real reason why an employee left from the remaining employees a few days or weeks after the leaving happened. This information is priceless if management doesn’t want their employee to continue jumping ship, but this method of receiving the information isn’t exactly perfect. Hearing things that have come down the grapevine often means they’ve been reinterpreted by each re-teller of the story meaning that the version received probably isn’t made up of the words spoken by the employee that left.

The only way to get the truth is to have an exit interview as recruiting and retention strategies with the employee where honesty, no matter how brutal, is encouraged. Management should also consider allowing recruiting the employee to have a say on who sits in on the interview, in case the employees' problems lie with a specific manager to who employees may not be comfortable telling those problems. These events' exit interviews are an invaluable tool for improving an establishment’s inner workings.

The Final Word

The COVID-19 pandemic shone the light on the livelihoods of restaurant workers, showing the stark contrast between the perceived truth and the underlying reality. The initial shutdowns of the pandemic highlighted the hardworking, underserved, and often under-compensated part of the employees' life, whilst the videos shared of the treatment many received after restaurants reopened highlighted the vulnerability of the situation these employees work in on a daily basis. It is a combination of these factors that have pushed employees to seek job security in other sectors of the working world.

If restaurants want to entice employees in through the door they let solutions start thinking differently about the benefits they offer, recruiting strategies, and the input the employees have into the location they’re working in. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to providing these benefits or fostering inclusion in the workplace because each events' location and its employees are different. But if a restaurant, be it a chain or a single unit operator, is going to retain and attract new employees then they need to think creatively about what they offer to the employee and how to channel a mutually beneficial working environment.

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Sanitation Practices for Post-COVID-19 Restaurant Operations

Ben Beddow — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 19:59:09 +0000

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Sanitation Practices for Post-COVID-19 Restaurant Operations

Ben Beddow

Published August 6, 2021

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As vaccination rates continue to rise COVID-19 restrictions are really beginning to loosen, and, for a lot of the country’s restaurants, life has pretty much returned to normal. This isn’t, however, the “old normal”. The happenings of the past 18 months can’t just be brushed under the proverbial rug, and there are concerns which are going to persist and define what has long been dubbed the “new normal”. One of the most significant of the concerns that is going to remain and shape the new normal are elevated sanitation standards.

The sanitation of shared public places was thrust into the spotlight when everything cautiously reopened after the initial shutdowns of 2020, and, a year on, focus on sanitation is yet to abate.

Customers now have a much better eye for sanitation standards and many, almost 90% in some surveys, say they’re going to be continued to be concerned about sanitation standards, with almost half of those customers citing a fear of slipping standards as a reason for their continued concern.

It makes no sense to reverse course after we’ve raised our standards so high. But, with the pandemic falling into the background, customer’s no longer want it thrust in their face either. They want to continue to feel reassured by sanitation but there is no longer a need to profess sanitation so openly. So how do restaurant owners and managers navigate these murky waters?

To Sign or Not To Sign?

Sanitation signage was one of the best ways for restaurants to communicate their efforts to their customers and to reassure them that their safety was of the utmost importance in the location they were visiting. But, with the pandemic taking a backseat as restaurants turn it up to the highest gear for a summer of recovery, is this signage still necessary?

This is a very tricky question and the answer will be different for every location. Factors that will affect decisions, amongst others, are the style of the location and the opinion of any stakeholders, those being: owners, managers, employees, and, most importantly, the location’s clientele.

Reducing signage by removing or changing mask mandating text, along with temperature check other elements of the preventative measure which are no longer enforced by the powers that be, is one way of continuing to communicate only the necessary enhanced sanitation practices to customers. Replacing signage with a friendly note, discreetly placed, is also an option.

Signage is optional and, whilst most customers are not going to want these reminders of the pandemic to be lingering when they’re out enjoying themselves, many are going to continue to seek the reassurance these signs provide.

Visibility and Verbiage

Since the pandemic began, ensuring that customers and members of the public can actually see sanitation in practice has been one of the main ways that businesses have displayed their care for their customer’s health. This led to some inventive practices, including bells signaling hand-washing breaks for employees. Such extreme examples as this might no longer be necessary, but continuing to keep sanitation practices visible is key to mitigating customer concerns in this area.

A lot can also be said about how employees phrase small details to their guests. For instance, instead of a host telling guests: “We’re just waiting for a table to be cleared off, you’ll be sat down in no time”; they could, instead, say: “your table is just getting cleared and sanitized, you’ll be sat down in just a moment”.

Including the sanitation of the table in the message immediately projects the idea that the location has a focus on sanitation, and this subtle difference can help to settle a guest’s nerves. Concentrate on verbiage for a day or two and see how you can adjust what you and your employees are saying in order to make guests feel more comfortable in your location.

Bathrooms

Bathroom cleanliness has always been regarded as the guest’s barometer of how clean a location is behind any “Employee Only” doors. This was, again, thrust into the spotlight during the pandemic and extra procedures were put in place to ensure that bathrooms were spotless for every guest.

These new practices need to continue as that “barometer” is going to be scrutinized by guests even more closely than before. Be sure that both soap and paper towels are adequately stocked, and that your “employees must wash hands” signs are as prevalent as ever.

The bathroom accessory that really found its calling during the pandemic was the hands-free door opener; showing itself off in a variety of ways, mainly as forearm and foot powered mechanisms. If these have not already been installed at a location they are a cheap and friendly reminder for customers that their safety matters; just make sure they get cleaned!

Shared Objects

Disposable became the bespoke way of showing customers that they’re safety was important, providing them with their own menu, silverware, and even plates. This, however, made the many planet conscious members of the general public cringe. Virtual menus are now being offered alongside sanitizable physical copies in many locations, and most have returned to using the silverware and flatware that everyone is used to. Proper sanitation of these items is now at the forefront of manager’s minds and polishing silverware and inspecting plates is now undertaken with much greater rigor than it ever was before.

Other shared objects -pin pads, pens, and door handles- became the focus of guests and restaurants during the pandemic, as everyone attempted to avoid potentially contaminated objects. Sanitation practices were put in place between uses and hand sanitizer was often strategically placed besides these objects for the convenience of both the customer’s safety and their peace of mind. These measures should continue until a solution is found to remove them.

A Final Note: Contactless

“Sanitation standards” may have been one of the restaurant buzzwords of the pandemic but another, which quickly became universal, was “contactless”. Having contactless solutions really helped to drive customer confidence in a location and a continued move toward contactless solutions can help drive customer confidence further.

These contactless solutions include: automatic faucets, automatic soap dispensers, automatic hand towel dispensers, hands-free door pulls, contactless card payments, automatic doors, and digital menu and ordering options.

Contactless is an element of keeping high sanitation standards which doesn’t require any sanitation and represents the pinnacle of what many customers want when it comes to feeling comfortable in restaurants. Not everything can be contactless but keeping high standards where necessary can continue to keep customers feeling safe and, ultimately, wanting to return to a location again and again and again.

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4 On-Location Dining Changes Customers Want to See Made Permanent Post-COVID

Ben Beddow — Thu, 13 May 2021 08:47:24 +0000

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Whilst many are looking in the rearview mirror at pandemic with relief there’re some who are, instead, looking keenly to the future, trying to discern what a post-pandemic world of restaurant service looks like.

The wants and needs of customers evolve over time, and restaurants evolve to meet them and keep their customers satisfied and loyal. The unique situation of the pandemic, and the preventative measures which came with it, have thrust a wide variety of changes upon restaurants. Many of these changes will fade into the past along with the memories of 2020, however there are four, pandemic based changes which customers are going to continue to appreciate, and even demand, in the post-pandemic era.

Quality Outdoor Seating

Once the first lockdown had ended the availability of outdoor seating was enough to bring patrons streaming back to a location. But, as the seasons changed and more and more locations reconfigured their spaces, finding the best outdoor restaurant space became a fixation of many customers.

Now customers no longer want to just be outside, they want to be comfortable outside. Whilst furniture is a major part of comfort, the quality of an outdoor space isn’t solely judged by the comfort of the furniture. In the summer customers want the option of shade and, vice versa, during the colder months heaters are their main desire.

Providing heat in the winter and shade in the summer not only makes an outdoor space more appealing by anticipating the customer’s needs, but it is also a smart business move. Guests who are more comfortable are likely to spend more money, and they’re also likely to stay longer into the afternoon or evening with the protection from the elements provided to them.

Taking the attention to craft a comfortable outdoor space could mean that a certain location becomes someone’s new favorite “spot”. Allowing a restaurant to create new regulars by being the one who best accommodates their needs and wants.

Spacious Dining Rooms

Restaurant margins are thin, and the preventative measures of capacity limits and distanced tables put in place during the pandemic put a heavy dent in those margins. Thankfully, some saw their revenue sustained by new and innovative outdoor spaces, others by a rise of takeout and delivery orders, and others by the more innovative means of ghost kitchens. As many states return to allowing restaurants to operate at 100% capacity there’re some who are wondering if packing their restaurant full of tables again is best for business.

There are a few questions for restaurant owners and managers to consider when discussing a return to 100% capacity: will the kitchen be able to handle the increase in orders alongside the new takeout business? Does the return of these seats, along with the extra ones now located in an outdoor space, strain either the service staff or the kitchen? Here we’re talking about not being able to keep up with orders, and the result of this is a lower standard and speed of service.

The final argument for not returning every table to a location is: do customers want to be packed in together again? Over the past year guests have become accustomed to having much more space around them when dining in a restaurant, resulting in the feeling of a more personalized experience; much like that which fine dining creates by spacing out their tables.

Some are happy, and even want, to return to packed spaces, i.e. “the old norm”. The “new norm”, however, will have many guests preferring restaurants which provide them with the spacious dining rooms they’ve become accustomed too and those guests many vote with the wallets, preferring to frequent the locations which provide them with a more spacious area in which to dine.

Digital Menus

Digital menus are one of a number of new methods of ordering which customers have become accustomed to at most restaurants and we discuss all of these options here. Digital menus are one of those options and they do have great benefits for the customer, but most of their benefits actually run in favor of the house.

Customers who choose digital menus may do so for several reasons, the two most popular being that they are conscious of sanitation or that they see a benefit for the environment by using a digital menu over its physical counterpart. Providing customers with digital menus also gives them access to the menu throughout their meal, allowing them to peruse it at their leisure when, say, they’re thirty or thinking of dessert.

The benefits of digital menus for restaurants run alongside the benefits which customers get from them. The first benefit is that it is an in-your-face, visual aid for their customers that displays the restaurant’s commitment to reducing their environmental impact. The second benefit is that they are often cheaper in the long run and editable at a moment’s notice. Finally, supplying guests with access to a digitized version of your menu means that they always have access to your menu, increasing the possibility of spontaneous wants being followed through quickly with orders, thus increasing sales and saving crucial time for service staff.

Heightened Sanitation Standards

The pandemic brought about more rigorous cleaning standards for restaurants, and many chose to highlight these during the pandemic as a way to display to their customers that they’re taking their safety seriously. These measures that were put in place for the safety of customers and staff in restaurants are now being relaxed, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that cleaning standards should return to their old level.

Regressing on things such as standards of cleanliness can send the wrong message to patrons for whom high standards of sanitation have now become a must. The pandemic has made many guests more conscious of the cleaning which goes on around them in a restaurant, and if it isn’t as visible a practice as has become the norm during the pandemic there’re many that will question if it’s happening at all.

Continuing with heightened standards of cleanliness is not just good hygienic practice, it can now help you keep customers who feel safer and more cared for in your location, and may also lead to positive reviews as a restaurant is compared with others who have let standards slip to old levels.

To Close

In its wake the pandemic has left some new and, under any other circumstances, unexpected needs and wants from customers. Even though the pandemic might soon be behind us the effect that it has on customer’s needs and wants will be long lasting, and restaurants can expect to have to accommodate what would before have been strange requests through the months and maybe even years to come.

Restaurants are a customer service orientated industry and a successful restaurant will do more than accommodate their customers wants and needs. Successful restaurants will, instead, anticipate and react to those needs and wants before the customer even knows what they need or want.

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COVID-19 Restaurant Trends Here to Stay Post-Pandemic

Ben Beddow — Sun, 02 May 2021 15:46:32 +0000

The global pandemic helped to accelerate the adoption of many technologies that were under utilized by the restaurant industry, such payments methods. Alongside this accelerated adoption the COVID-19 pandemic shepherded in a stream of new restaurant trends, brought on by the sudden changes consumers and operators had to incorporate into their lifestyles and their businesses.

Some of these coronavirus food trends will fade along with the restrictions that have become commonplace in restaurants over the past year. There are, however, others that both operators and consumers will want to see preserved as restaurant future trends. We discussed a major one of these trends, digital ordering, in a piece a few weeks ago, but there’re many other evolutions which have happened throughout the restaurant industry over the past year that customers are going to want to see persevere into the future, and these are the latest trends in the restaurant industry.

Post-Pandemic Consumers Demand Meal Options

Prior to the pandemic, meal options we’re usually limited to the quick service and fast casual segments of the restaurant industry. During the pandemic many full service restaurants, of all styles and cuisines, expanded their offering to include meal options for their consumers.

This COVID food trend extends from the growth of prix fixe menus in higher end restaurants, to the offering of cheaper, daily changing options in full service, casual dining locations. These more affordable options, which still allow restaurants to flex their creative muscles, are going to continue to be looked for in a post-pandemic world by consumers who’ve become accustom to their availability.

High Quality Takeout Food Packaging

For many venues takeout food was their saving grace through the pandemic. It kept regular customers loyal and, for some, offered expansion into a new revenue stream and takeout is here to stay. What many venues and, more importantly, many consumers noticed was that all packaging wasn’t created equal. The styrofoam and cardboard containers, which delivered moister-than-meant-to-be food, no longer cut it for customers who wanted the fresh restaurant food experience at their own dining table.

As a result, there was rapid growth in the availability of innovative packaging which helped to keep food, such as wings and bread, crisp. This means that carefully designed and prepared dishes now arrive at a customer’s front door just as the restaurant would intend them to arrive at a table inside their location.

With some restaurants offering these improvements to their takeout food customers will be quick to lean toward ordering from venues which they know produce high quality takeout food. This means that they might forego ordering from venues who’s offering come in outdated and lower quality food packaging.

Cloud Kitchens are Here to Stay

A growing concept before the pandemic, cloud kitchens, also known as ghost kitchens, were helped by the move to online ordering and delivery based consumption of restaurant food; spurring the emergence of many new restaurants in this sector. Their growth was accelerated by the pandemic and now it seems that, with takeout and delivery service being very commonplaces, they’re going to continue to grow.

Whilst these businesses may not offer physical locations in which to eat their food other restaurants still need to be wary of these new competitors whom they may brush over as operating in another segment. If a cloud kitchen is offering the same cuisine as a brick and mortar venue then they are going to be competitors, not only for delivery and takeout food but, if the cloud kitchen’s cuisine is cheaper and/or better than a brick and mortar location consumers may prefer to order from the cloud kitchen; especially as they are now so used to eating restaurant food at their own dining table.

Cloud kitchens also offer a revenue opportunity for restaurants. Some venues have rented out their kitchens, when they’re not using them, to cloud kitchen operators so they can prep or cook meals. Others have taken the opportunity to, metaphorically, expand their kitchen from one into two, servicing their venue with the dishes that are on their menu whilst also offering a whole other selection of items online under a different name, sometimes of a totally different cuisine.

Keeping Pandemic Based Cleaning Regimes

When restaurants were allowed to reopen at the beginning of last summer there was a huge emphasis placed on COVID-19 measures, and many venues chose to spotlight their expanded cleaning practices.

With mask mandates and capacity limits being dropped many customers are relieved to return to some level of normality when it comes to dining out. However, in a recent survey 80% of participants said they were going to continue to be extra cautious of germs in restaurants. This shows us that, as a public space, restaurants and their cleaning practices are going to just as scrutinized going forward as they were at the height of the pandemic.

Returning to old practices, now standards have increased, seems to be against sensible thought. Also, knowing that customers will have a keener eye on a restaurant’s cleanliness than before should infer that restaurants continue with these elevated standards. Not doing so may not seem to have a direct effects on business, however, much like with food complaints, there will be some customers who take their thoughts home and share them with their family an friends whom, in turn, may be deterred from visiting a venue or may even pass these stories of cleanliness, or lack thereof, onto their family and friends.

Fine Dining To Go Food Will Survive the Pandemic

Pre-pandemic very few people ever imagined ordering high-end food and, in some states, wine to be delivered to their front door; sometimes course by course. More than that, many didn’t expect the manager of the restaurant to be checking in with them via video link after they’d started each course. Such ideas and concepts are some of the many to have emerged from the changes in lifestyle everyone had to adapt as a result of the pandemic.

Such offerings, whilst maybe not as sought after as some other trends mentioned above, are going to become a permanent part of many fine dining restaurants offerings. Not only does this expand the number of customers they can serve in an evening but it also allows them to explore the avenue of delivery, which was not a viable option for them to use to increase their revenue stream before the pandemic.

A Final Word

Whilst inherently a bad thing, the pandemic can be said to have had a positive influence on the restaurant industry. In restaurants after the pandemic, improved takeout food and improved cleaning practices are some of the immediate and positive takeaways of the pandemic. Whilst high-end food delivered to your home, expanded meal options, and the growth cloud kitchens are exciting new COVID food trends which will continue to evolve as time progresses.

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