Restaurants & Eateries are slated to open as part of Phase 3. Once we have clearer guidelines, this tip sheet will be updated.
In the meantime, the NYC Restaurant Alliance is a great resource for restaurant reopening information. You can find their resources here
Be sure that you complete your New York State mandates Safety Plan and keep it at your business. Click here to download a simple template to create your plan.
Letting your patrons know what you are doing to keep them safe and well will make them feel more comfortable about coming back o your restaurant or eatery. Take a look at the Trust + Safety Tip sheet for more ideas about how to do that.
A couple of other tips to you may want to consider implementing include:
- Consider a reservations-only business model or call-ahead seating to better-spaced diners.
- Establish areas for take-out pickup and related wait lines.
- Design a process to ensure guests stay separate while waiting to be seated.
- Think about floor markings, outdoor distancing, etc.
- If you sell alcohol to go, remind customers that legally they can’t drink in front of your business and have to take their alcohol home
- Update floor plans for common dining areas, redesigning seating arrangements to ensure at least six feet of separation between table setups.
- Take guest and service areas into account when calculating social distancing measures based on total square footage
- Limit party size at tables to no more than the established “maximum approved” as recommended by CDC or approved by the state
- Discard all single-use items
- Consider using rolled silverware and eliminating table presets
- Remove lemons, garnishes and unwrapped straws from self-service drink stations
- Clean and sanitize reusable menus
- If you use paper menus, discard them after each customer use
- Implement procedures to increase how often you clean and sanitize surfaces in the back-of-house.
- Avoid all food contact surfaces when using disinfectants
- Make hand sanitizer readily available to guests.
- Where practical, like in booth seating, use physical barriers
- Limit contact between wait staff and guests.
- If practical, install physical barriers such as partitions or plexiglass barriers, or even clear shower curtains ,at registers
- Use technology solutions whenever you can to reduce person-to-person interaction. Think in terms of mobile ordering and menu tablets, text on arrival for seating, contactless payment options
- Clean all tech devices between each customer usage
- Between seatings, clean and sanitize table condiments, digital ordering devices, check presenters, self-service areas, tabletops, and commonly touched areas
- Designate an employee as your Wellness Ambassador to come up with ideas to keep employees and customers well
If you have any questions or have other tips that you’d like to share with us, let us know at hellomontaguebid@gmail.com
