Article contributed by Mike Berman, COO, Day & Nite/All Service, with Tia Tassava
Last week’s column introduced Day & Nite’s engineered Performance Solutions platform as the hospitality industry’s most comprehensive portfolio for cost-effectively restoring normalcy. This week, our seventh weekly edition focuses on the tough managerial challenges facing our industry.
Practical
Managing economic risk, diligent cash preservation naturally dominates. As established in our week 4 column, old rules of line-item budgeting should be replaced by more integrated, holistic strategies. New practical strategies are needed not in reaction to the steep decline in receipts or because nobody could have budgeted coronavirus dollars in advance, but because all the old rules simply no longer apply. Every expenditure must work harder and travel further than it ever did before. High impact decisions are strategically vital and cannot be governed by following the rules of commodity purchasing. No reputable establishment ever considered environmental, workplace, equipment, or food safety unimportant. But under the old rules, these were logically managed as expenses to marginalize.
Today, as we begin to think about reopening, the risk of not wisely investing in the most comprehensive safeguards isn’t merely quantified by risk avoidance but to your very brand. Even under the best future conditions, guests will not soon forget the pandemic’s true horror. The risk to your brand is, as people begin to think it’s safe to go outside, they may not feel safe coming inside, particularly inside your restaurant, bar, or hotel.
Ambiguous
Even under the most controlled, normal set of circumstances, figuring out
- Â Human behavior
- Â Government policy, and
- Â Supply chain reliability
is as inexact and subject to change at a moment’s notice as it gets. Today, all three are now closely linked for the hospitality sector while also more unpredictable than ever before. Established in our first crisis management column, determining your best strategy to stay ahead of the market is necessary. Anything short of working from ahead will only amplify and accelerate the consequences of these critical yet unpredictable forces. That strategy will allow you to best influence and maintain control over these three vital factors that will ultimately determine the pace and rate of your future success.
Waiting for official federal, state, or local ordinances to dictate how you will best protect employee, patron, and food safety only reinforces reasons why guests will wait to return to your establishment. Featured in our week 5 column, the Engagious Back to Normal Business Barometer makes it clear that consumers will best put their trust in proactive leaders, having more reason to doubt even the fastest and most sincere followers.
Waiting for government policy and delaying guests will only put further strain on your cash position. Forced to react, purchasing the needed products to ensure safety is likely to result in higher costs and more delays. We have all seen a spike in PPE prices regarding delays in acquiring needed products and a rise in counterfeit goods. Expect this to multiply on harder to produce more sophisticated items like UV lighting.
There’s grave danger losing control over these independent, let alone collective forces. By contrast, there’s a notable economic opportunity if you get out ahead of them, now.
The Day & Nite Performance Solutions Balance
As noted in each crisis management column, we’re not dispensing advice for you to follow; we’re sharing our playbook with our friends and associates in the industry. Everything baked into the Performance Solutions cake accounts for the practical and ambiguous.
Day & Nite Performance Solutions offers three tiers within its extensive portfolio:
A. Minimum Necessary Compliance: ahead of official government policy and based on counsel with leading officials, academics, healthcare professionals, environmentalists, manufacturers, inherent sterilization and sanitization expertise in commercial HVAC, Refrigeration, Cooking and Plumbing equipment installation, maintenance, and repair are the baseline standards you must be prepared to meet upon reopening.
B. Hospital Grade: a more advanced and intricate engineered solution suite designed to provide higher rates of perpetual establishment, workplace, patron, and food safety. This borrows from best practices found in leading hospitals in this heavily legislated and regulated field. Hospital Grade emphasizes sterilization over sanitization.
C. Cleanroom Safe: the highest order, following principles established in technology and pharmaceutical manufacturing, cleanroom is precisely what the term implies.
Undoubtedly, all would want to have a level of cleanroom safe. But as a practical matter, starting there may not be a wise cash management decision. Consistent with all our crisis management methods, a most practical approach might often be a strategy of starting with the minimum necessary at first. Then, on a prescribed schedule, phase up to cleanroom safe.
Day & Nite Performance Solutions is positioned to and committed to delivering on the We’re All In This Together promise by working with you to logically and cost-effectively to bring our industry back and better than ever, most efficiently. Please put us to this commitment by contacting us today!
