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Tag: covid-19 reopening

Pandemic prompts small-business tweaks that may endure

From curbside pickup and senior shopping hours to dining in yurts and viewing menus via smart phones, small businesses and restaurants were forced to institute a wide range of customer safety and service steps in 2020. Business owners now are examining which of those experiments were so successful that they will stay around post-pandemic.

The pandemic pushed businesses to turn from what was easiest and best for their own internal operations to instead adapt to become more consumer centric, said Chris Romer, CEO at Vail Valley Partnership, a nonprofit dedicated to regional economic vitality.

“The businesses that thrive coming out of the pandemic are going to be 100% focused on the customer experience,” Romer said. “Things that make it easier for consumers are here to stay. The pandemic fast-tracked a lot of that.”

Changes that small-business experts expect to stick are those related to customer comforts and technological advances such as non-contact payments, scannable QR codes for digital menus, curbside pickup of retail and restaurant orders, enhanced to-go ordering apps and online platforms, and expanded delivery services.

With restaurants and bars suffering some of the toughest blows, look for the continuation of carry-out cocktails, dining in unique outdoor settings such as in retired gondola cars, seating expanded into public rights of way, and seasonal extensions of outdoor patio dining, said Sonia Riggs, CEO of the 3,500-member Colorado Restaurant Association. Riggs said food and beverage organizations will carry through with pandemic lessons learned that boost efficiency and cut costs since the profit margin of restaurants is low, averaging 5% to 7%.

The Town of Breckenridge instituted a Walkable Main Street for five blocks from July through September that was a popular and successful experiment, as it introduced more tables and chairs and more space to stroll through downtown, said Brian Waldes, town finance director. He said creating a pedestrian zone on Highway 9 had been discussed for many years, but the “pandemic was the tipping point to try it.”

“We had great visitation numbers over the summer,” Waldes said. “We really feel that it (Walkable Main) kept that level of economic activity.”

Expanded outdoor zones for public consumption of alcoholic beverages are popular with guests and are expected to survive post-pandemic. Last year leaders approved common consumption areas, for example, at ski base areas in Steamboat Springs, Vail, Telluride and Beaver Creek.

Many small businesses committed the time and funds in 2020 to improve online shopping options to serve customers remotely. In small towns such as Fruita and Palisade, chambers pivoted from organizing in-person events to expanding community-wide business websites. Kayla Brown, Fruita Area Chamber of Commerce executive director, said she saw “a huge need” to create a “shop local” directory called GrandValleyBusiness.com.

“We weren’t looking into building an online platform,” Brown said, “but we know the value in having a good online resource now more than ever because of the pandemic.”

Handling a new normal in the workplace

Never in a million years did I think we’d have a serious business conversation about how many lawyers should be allowed to use the bathroom at once.

What’s the right number? Is it two? Four? Even six? Do we need to investigate the matter and do a little research? Maybe count stalls, measure floor plans, even (God forbid!) do a comparative analysis of the mens’ and ladies’ rooms?

For argument’s sake, let’s say we find the right number. The perfect number. Let’s say it’s three.

How in the world can you tell whether or not there are one, two, three, six or zero people in there at one time? Do you have a system? Some type of punch in, punch out sign? Or do you just ask people holler in there and have the folks using the restroom sound off? Do you need a sign-up sheet? A reservation system?

These topics are as ridiculous as they sound, almost like the start of a really bad joke. Something like, “How many lawyers does it take to use the restroom?”

But in the world of coronavirus, these topics aren’t a joke. They are deadly serious. And in the midst of all this, you have to make decisions within an environment that is supposed to be a place of business.

These are the kinds of moments and discussions that define 2020. It feels like the Twilight Zone.

I am one of many owners of a small business, a law firm in Denver. Moye White LLP employs a total of 134 people, including 66 attorneys. I’m one of five partners charged with managing the firm. When I was asked by my partners to help manage the firm several years ago, I anticipated all kinds of management challenges with business, the law, human resources and all the various issues which pop up and need to be handled on a daily basis.

What I never anticipated was having to have a serious management conversation with my partners about how many lawyers can use the restroom at the same time. It seems unreal, but it is a reality for my business and for businesses across Colorado and around the country.

Like countless other businesses, we took our office completely remote in the middle of March. If you had told me then that it would be harder to return to the office than it was to leave it, I wouldn’t have believed you. But that has proven to be true.

There are a plethora of issues, from the obvious to the mundane to the unreal, to tackle in order to return to the office safely. Everything needs to be handled effectively so people can come back to the office and work as they have for years until now.

Let me share another fun detail. Coffee. The elixir of life, particularly in a law firm. I shudder to think of the sheer volume of coffee that our law firm goes through on a daily basis. Coffee is the fuel that we lawyers use each and every day to operate. We brew it in huge dispensers, multiple times a day, at four different locations in the office.

And now, we simply can’t. We can’t have the huge dispensers. We can’t have people swing by and pump themselves some coffee. We can’t have several people congregating and chatting by the coffee station like before. Coffee is gone.

These new realities have made me rethink everything I know about a workplace. But I’m learning that just because something is crazy doesn’t mean it’s not real. And it doesn’t mean we don’t have to deal with it. And if that isn’t 2020 in a nutshell, I don’t know what is.

There are also countless details that are less humorous. People are scared, and rightfully so. Individual people have individual circumstances regarding health or family or other factors. The spectrum of viewpoints on COVID-19 and its relative risks spans a wide range, making conversations and decisions especially complicated.  

And the hardest part about these conversations is that there is no undoubtedly perfect answer. We don’t know enough to make the perfect decision. We don’t have any previous experience in dealing with these types of issues. We’re just going to have to take it one step at a time, doing our best and hoping for the best.

I really don’t know if we’ll ever figure out the perfect number of lawyers who can use the restroom at the same time. We’ll make a guess, and we’ll devise a system. And it may work, or it may not. We may get lucky and pick the perfect number. Or we may pick a number and system that we use for 15 minutes before we realize we made the wrong choice. 

One way or the other, we’ll figure it out, day-by-day and bit-by-bit. The only thing I know for certain is that somehow we will all find a way to get through this together, so long as no more than three lawyers in our office have to pee at the same time.

Billy Jones is a partner at Denver-based Moye White where he focuses on complex civil litigation and business disputes. He can be reached at [email protected] or 303.292.7930

COVID-19 spawns creativity with restaurateurs

Since Colorado’s stay-at-home order was issued in March, restaurants “are doing about 10% of the business they’ve done before,” consultant John Imbergamo says. “They’re trying to innovate and be clever and do new things, but there’s just this fire hose of people doing clever and new, so it’s really hard to get messages out.”

Not that it’s a polar shift from the pre-pandemic era, he adds. “It was very, very hard to staff, and because we were paying quite a bit more, it was very, very difficult to make a nickel.”

It follows that COVID-19 was the final straw for many restaurateurs. “The pandemic has probably accelerated some decisions for people in terms of closing down,” Imbergamo says. “There’s a subsector of the market that will never come back, and that’s buffets. Never’s a bad term, but it’s going to be a long time before anybody’s comfortable doing that.”

While the labor situation “is going to be different after we’re allowed to reopen,” he adds, “I think any projections of where we’re going to be in six months are essentially a waste of breath.”

Steven Cook of Broadway Real Estate says he sees independent restaurants better equipped for the pandemic fallout. “The mom-and-pops and small entrepreneurs, they can get creative and be flexible and adjust with the times,” he says. “Then you’ve got Starbucks, who are sending letters basically bullying people and saying, ‘Hey, we’re not going to pay the rent that’s in their lease. Take it or leave it.'”

At the other end of the spectrum, Euro Crepes, a Cook tenant on South Broadway, has just one location. “They’re going to do everything they can to survive,” Cook says.

The Big Red F Restaurant Group’s 13 restaurants in Colorado “are going to take things very slowly,” founder Dave Query says. “It’s going to be very challenging, it’s going to be very scary for people.”

Part of it depends on seating restrictions, he adds. “No bar seats and 25% of capacity just doesn’t work. So we’ll probably stay in a to-go-only mode until things calm down a little bit — which they will.”