Article contributed by Mike Berman, COO, Day & Nite/All Service, with Tia Tassava
June opened with a NY Times survey of 511 epidemiologists and closes with a CNN survey of medical professionals, both showing the same thing. Among the most trusted experts, there is no real consensus. Further complicating matters for the hospitality industry, so much of what experts thought they knew has been altered along the way.
For months it was thought children and young adults were not at COVID-19 risk. As of press time, 33 states have reported the number of new coronavirus cases on the increase. A high and growing percentage of the newly infected are young adults and children. For months we were told the arrival of warmer weather would stem the tide of new coronavirus cases. Yet, in early summer 2020, sunbelt states like Florida, Arizona, and Texas are experiencing a surge in COVID-19 infections.
Local, state, and federal authorities carefully planned and deliberately implemented multi-phase, tightly controlled reopening. As of press time, no fewer than ten states have either paused, delayed, or rolled back phased reopenings.
Regular readers of this column will recognize this as our lucky 13th installment because the crisis management advice and business management tips featured every week have not just predicted continued volatility. We have offered high-impact strategies and devices to steer clear of constant dangers. JPMorgan’s recently released survey, establishing a direct link between rising COVID-19 cases to increased card-present restaurant spending should at once send a shiver down the hospitality industry’s spine while having you refer back to our previous 12 columns. For immediate purposes, we call your particular attention to “The Next Phase of Your Business: Prioritizing Expertise and Collaboration” from Total Food Service’s April 27th edition.
As medical science always does, they will someday figure COVID-19 out. Yet the growing trend of deadly airborne diseases–SARS, MERS, Ebola, bird flu, swine flu, E. coli–as well as more established lethal viruses that may be contained but still pose a serious threat like HIV and hepatitis strongly suggest medical science cannot be solely relied upon to keep us safe. Consequently, precautions cannot just be about COVID-19. Instead, comprehensive prevention and precaution strategies against the serious airborne disease of all strains and types is essential for the hospitality industry as we have known it to survive, let along thrive. Anything less than assembling a team of cross-functional experts will prove insufficient.
Collaborating with these subject matter experts to execute your most comprehensive and scalable safety and hygiene platform will put you in far better control of events that have thus far controlled the entire planet. Building on top of baseline protocols such as PPE rather than stopping at standards like masks, gloves, hand sanitizer is as inevitable as the changes in understanding COVID-19 have been (again, it’s the summer, and the statistics show warm weather is not stopping the spread! Young people are the fastest-growing segment of the COVID-19 population!!).
Hospitality professionals must urgently respond to permanent societal changes by aggressively meeting today’s and all future environmental, workplace, employee, guest, and food safety challenges, now. The only thing worse for the hospitality industry than the COVID-19 outbreak is a relapse from phased reopenings.
For logical reasons, most companies in all industries spent the better part of late winter, spring, and early summer figuring out how to simply hang on. Market-leading Day & Nite/All Service/Popular Plumbing’s greater responsibility to the hospitality industry in desperate need of its unrivaled expertise has used this time to acquire and deploy even greater resources to the market. On top of already deep knowledge, we have been in and remain in regular contact with literally thousands of individual restaurants, hotels, resorts, stadiums, building management companies, real estate developers, landlords, medical experts, academics, professional service leaders, corporate dining, large and small company facilities management. The total consolidated insights from this wide range of the business community represent invaluable expertise readily available to you.
Day & Nite Performance Solutions carefully curated portfolio of engineered products and services is designed as the most scalable, comprehensive platform. A collaboration of multi-disciplinary experts, Day & Nite Performance Solutions, incorporates sophisticated technology and leading institutional knowledge to cost-effectively sterilize and sanitize, prepare and prevent, to deliver maximum safety and hygiene. Where so much of COVID-19 and other harmful airborne disease science is emergent, Day & Nite Performance Solutions continues to be ahead of the leading edge with proven, tangible answers to everyone’s most troubling questions about what “the new normal” will be.
