Hospitality businesses will welcome new safety protocols, but balancing asepsis with ambience will be tough, says David Burrows.
It was March 16th that Boris Johnson advised us all not to go to places like pubs, restaurants and cafés. These businesses could remain open, though, the prime minister said – a baffling move that gave the impression that enjoying a pint or popping out for pizza was a matter of life or death. A week later and operators were ordered to close.
It’s now almost June and the lockdown in England is being eased, with some sectors returning to work. Hospitality firms are having to bide their time, with Johnson having pencilled in July 4th as the (earliest possible) date that cafés, pubs and the like could reopen (for services other than takeaway and delivery). There is much to do and much keeping owners awake at night, not least how to reassure customers that setting foot on their premises will be safe. Start thinking about the questions you need to answer in order to reopen safely and “it’s going to make your brain bleed”, the chef David Chang told the New York Times in April.
Since then, pandemic safety protocols have become the talk of the town. The World Travel & Tourism Council, for example, has unveiled a range of new worldwide measures designed to “rebuild confidence among consumers so they can travel safely once the restrictions are lifted”. These include everything from staff retraining and the use of masks to the integration of new technologies.
Hotels are looking at everything from “virtual” concierges to thermal CCTV cameras to detect high body temperatures amongst guests and staff. “Covid-19 has forced human behaviour to trust technology will deliver,” noted Yazan Sabelaish, senior IT director at Four Seasons Hotels Dubai in a recent blog for Hotel & Catering News Middle East.
This is exciting stuff for the technophiles, but most of the preparations will involve the mundane rather than the modern. “First and foremost, ask all staff to wash their hands immediately before leaving home and when arriving at work to wash their hands immediately upon arrival,” reads UKHospitality’s new “best practice health and safety protocols”.
But the impact of pulling all this advice together so everyone is working towards the same goals should not be underestimated. Both UKH and WTTC have been quick to grasp that there is safety in numbers. “To build confidence, new standards need to be across the industry, standards that the consumer can understand,” Federico González, chief executive with Radisson Hotel Group, reportedly said at the In Sync online trade show this month. The “common reference” points provided by protocols like the WTTC, he added, will “be key, and if we fail to deliver it, we will be punished”.
UKH’s guidance will sit alongside the Government’s Covid-19 secure guidelines for hospitality businesses, which are a work in progress (guidelines are available for takeaway and delivery services). Ministers have been sent the UKH’s draft risk assessments to mull over. A sample has been offered to media, focusing on three sub-sectors: hotels, restaurants and casual dining and pubs and bars. The advice is mostly common sense: no trays of cutlery to dig around in, washing hands after helping guests with luggage and choosing effective disinfectants and sanitisers.
There will be scope for businesses to get creative though: the “no handshakes” advice for reception staff is followed by the suggestion that they “adopt a USP for greeting guests”. One imagines the many marketing execs on furlough will already be itching to develop something Instagramable.
Some of the other advice will do little to dampen the chorus of support for single-use plastic that the packaging industry is so keen to conduct. “Individually wrapped condiments and sauces should be offered on request and put with the plated food, not left on tables,” seems sensible in the circumstances. Although what’s wrong with a small pot of ketchup filled from a bottle by kitchen staff?
Plastic-wrapped condiments are just one part of JD Wetherspoon’s £11m programme to “ensure that it’s staff and customers are safe before its pubs reopen”.
There are also Perspex screens across the bars and between tables, extra cleaning, and staff could be kitted out in masks, gloves and goggles. The race to reassure pub-goers, coffee-drinkers and diners is certainly on, but is there a chance that businesses will scare customers off rather than reassure them that it’s safe to come back in?
Look at the UKH guidance available so far and the most restrictive protocols are likely to be placed on pubs. An orderly, socially distanced queue at the bar is advised, or perhaps better still table service with drinks ordered via an app. This will suit those who have long struggled to attract the attention of bar staff when ordering a round, but in sterilising the system and clearing the bar there is a danger that the spirit of the pub is washed away too.
