The whole of 2020 has been a string of challenges to many industries, including restaurants and the hospitality industry. While there have been some spikes with new standards, like to-go alcohol sales, and reopened dining rooms, efforts are still slowing as the weather turns colder.
Kelly Valade, the CEO of Black Box Intelligence, provided an industry update recently and while she points out the growth plateau, she is still optimistic. “It’s flattening, but there continues to be marked improvement week over week as now almost 85% of the dining rooms in our data set are open,” Valade said.
While that leaves more than 100,000 restaurants across the U.S. at the high risk of permanently or temporarily closing, Valade began to break down the specific challenges to the restaurant industry, creating an outline of how those restaurants that are open can continue to beat the downturn.
Firstly, providing jobs means staying open. While many industries continue to face layoffs and furloughs—and the restaurant industry accounted for as many as 2.5 million layoffs—restaurants that are keeping employees on and caring for those employees are seeing their numbers up. Valade said the best-performing companies were those who were connecting with and taking good care of their employees, according to a Nations Restaurant News article.
Richard Weil, owner and CEO of National Restaurant notes, “operators that look at staffing needs as how do ‘I become the best employer’ will create competitive advantages. This not only includes compensation, but ancillary soft cost benefits in engaging and communicating with staff. Certainly, hard costs such as PTO, Family Leave, and overall compensation are important factors, but operators that create trust as a priority will succeed more often in retaining staff”.
The common thread in surviving 2020, across industries, is creativity. Those businesses which have thought outside of the box and sought inventive solutions to challenges have found themselves on the upward swing. For example, Valade sees this with employment rates. While some areas have been downsized, there is also an oncoming need for new positions. She specifically mentions such roles as “sanitation specialist” or someone to handle off-premise orders.
This creativity extends into all facets of a restaurant, from menu changes, adjusted hours, new offerings, and marketing efforts. Our restaurant consultants are prepared to approach all of these challenges with the ingenuity required to find success in this economy in this unprecedented year.
